In 2007, reports emerged that Shenmue Online, an MMO announced in 2004 as the next entry in the franchise, had been cancelled. The Shenmue 3 Debacleįor over 15 years, fans of the Shenmue franchise received nothing but a short-lived Japan-only mobile game. He eventually left Sega in 2011, after stepping back from his role with the company in 2008. On top of Shenmue’s failure, Suzuki’s career also fell into turmoil. Poor sales left Shenmue 3 in development hell for over a decade. At the time, Shenmue was the most expensive game ever developed, making its failure even more devastating for Sega. In part due to the Dreamcast’s commercial failure, Shenmue and Shenmue 2 flopped, despite the hard work of Suzuki and Sega AM2. Much of the first game consists of fetch quests and slow-moving dialogue sequences with only a handful of battles. Unfortunately, Shenmue hasn’t aged well. It only tells the first chapter of the larger story, and there’s very little action. Sega’s Yakuza franchise would later replicate this formula to greater avail. Shenmue blended a variety of genres, mixing traditional fighting game sequences with quick time events, and peppering the game world with minigames. Designed to model real people, NPCs move around on a 24-hour cycle, living their own simulated lives. Shenmue takes place in a map based on an actual small town in Japan. These concepts would develop into what we know as Shenmue. Suzuki and his team planned out systems that would make the gameplay as realistic as possible. To achieve this, he set out to craft a single story spanning across multiple games, with a few chapters of that story told in each new entry. Yu Suzuki, the developer who led Sega’s legendary AM2 division for 18 years, wanted to create the most immersive game imaginable. Pioneering the open-world genre while pushing some of the most realistic graphics of its time, Shenmue was on the cutting edge of gaming technology in 1999. Unless you don’t mind waiting for a year, PC gamers should just suck it up.Sega released Shenmue for their ill-fated Dreamcast console on Decemto widespread acclaim. You still get to play the game on the PC, after all just on an Epic-branded game store and platform. This seems pretty fair, all things considered. Details on this will be on the next development update. It’s just that a Steam version is a no-go for now. If they rather change it to a PS4 version (physical or PSN code), they have the option to do so. However, PC gamers will still be able to get the game on PC they will instead be given an Epic Games Store key or a physical disc of the game with a key.“Coordination with the sales policies of the involved companies was untenable,” said Ys Net, “and as a result, we are not able to make a day one distribution option for Steam keys available.” Backers who requested for Steam keys will get them….a year later.But fear not: developer Ys Net and publisher Deep Silver have posted an update on its Kickstarter page to address the issue. This definitely irked a lot of them accustomed to playing their Kickstarted games on Steam. That’s pretty much Shenmue 3‘s case, with PC gamers coming to grips with the fact that the game is now an Epic Games Store exclusive. A lot can happen to a Kickstarted game using a renowned legacy franchise and developer between 14th June, 2015, and now, especially when you have two new distribution platforms vying for exclusivity.
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