[Captain L]

Sega, if the HD versions are done, what possible reason could you have for not releasing them? It's not costs, it won't cost much to release them, and you know people will buy this up.

And it would certainly be nice to see the games on a platform I own. So, something besides XBLA and PSN.

[TimmiT]

As for ports of Shenmue 1 & 2, there is this:

This post has been edited by TimmiT: 03 March 2013 - 07:23 PM

[Aerosol]

I don't think there are enough Sega fans with enough disposable income to fully kickstart Shenmue 3. But I do believe they'd be able to scrounge up enough cash to garner investor interest. But really, if Shenmue 3 is going to be made, it's going to have to do things differently. Shenmue 2 would not fly today.

[Lobotomy]

I will seriously put every penny I own into this.

[sonicblur]

I would be willing to pay a lot more than I normally would buy a game for, (mainly because Shenmue 2 was one of my favorite Dreamcast games) but I also agree that it's unlikely for this work out.

They should probably start with a kickstarter to re-release the first two with some graphical updates to bring the games closer to today's graphical standards. They were amazing back then, but some higher resolution textures, models, and lighting improvements would probably help them get new people to play it and possibly expand interest in the third. A few million would probably be enough for a good refreshed port.

I'd assume that some work was already done on the 3rd, based on the two screenshots they released of it on shenmue.com long ago, and the fact that so many pieces of Shenmue 2 were running on the Saturn even before the first one came out on Dreamcast. The Yakuza team manages to churn out a new game every year, and although those aren't nearly the scale of Shenmue, I think it's similar enough that it shows that a 3rd might be possible on a more reasonable budget nowadays.

[Aesculapius Piranha]

Dude, if this gets crowdfunded, I would put as much money as I could spare into it. I don't even care if the rewards are crap. (Yeah, a bit of a bump, but I just learned about this. Holy crap please let it be true.)

Edit: And to make this a productive post and not just hype, I just came across this from GDC:
https://twitter.com/...526010922954753

This post has been edited by Aesculapius Piranha: 29 March 2013 - 05:13 AM

[Metal Man88]

The 70 million dollar posts make me think that they vastly overdid Shenmue 1 and 2. They should focus on telling the story, not lavishly wasting money on things that no one will be able to pay back.

Shenmue 3 would be possible if people could simply re-engineer it so that they could make it appear like the older ones, without lavishly wasting millions of dollars. Big money doesn't magically make something good, anyway.

[winterhell]

Inb4 some of the mini/arcade games in Shenmue 3 are going to require micro transactions to unlock

[Kail]

Captain L, on 03 March 2013 - 07:15 PM, said:

Sega, if the HD versions are done, what possible reason could you have for not releasing them? It's not costs, it won't cost much to release them, and you know people will buy this up.

And it would certainly be nice to see the games on a platform I own. So, something besides XBLA and PSN.

Work could be done on them but they could be sitting on them until the time is right to release them. Say, for instance, they started work on HD versions of Shenmue 1 and 2 and then during production of those SEGA assembled another team to actually do Shenmue 3, in that event the work on Shenmue 1 and 2 HD would finish but SEGA could hold back the release until they had an idea of when Shenmue 3 would be ready for release so they could plan to release Shenmue 1 and 2 HD 6 to 9 months earlier as part of the promotion for 3.

If they re-release Shenmue 1 and 2 now it wouldn't do much for them as the hype would possible die down before 3 would even be announced, their plan would be to put together a whole Shenmue hype-fest that would really drive up interest. Just look at the Team Ico collection they put out. It was supposed to be the lynchpin in the marketing for The Last Guardian, but wound up just releasing and just as quickly going under the rug. Sega doesn't want to do that with Shenmue.