That article was poorly written. If anyone had the privilege of being selected to a closed door special announcement of Shenmue 3 I highly doubt the writer would walk out feeling the franchise would bust. There was no game reveal or anything of that nature, just information regarding the future of shenmue and this schmuck of a journalist creates an article bashing the return of the game. That's why I don't even believe the writer or anything he tries to fantasize happened including the so called closed event no one else reported on lol. Looking through the comments in the article; this journalist seems to be completely clueless.

Bullshit

Every year we are so close and every year it's a letdown the boy can cry wolf so many times last 10 years. This will end up in another let down and Shenmue fan sites will freak out and get thier hopes up as always.

Well it's of course not impossible, I personally just don't see it. If the want to release Shenmue 3 then they absolutely have to release 1 & 2 HD in my opinion.

And yeah, the budget might be smaller then the original games' but that still doesn't mean it would be small and since I have a hard time believing that Shenmue 3 would hit even a million that could still mean significant losses.

About Kingdom Hearts 3, how do you know it's tracking ahead in preorders of the last two numbered Kingdeom Hearts games? Though even if it did, we have to acknowledge that in the last years the preorder culture has grown massively, I'm pretty sure that people didn't preorder half as much during the PS2 days.

Ok, so i dislike one of the big three with a passion.

With that been said, if Shenmue 3 ever does get the green light, i want it to be on EVERYTHING (X1, WiiU, PC & PS4.) and the reason why i want it on everything is so that this amazing franchise can reach as many gamers as humanly possible no matter what their console(s) of choice, and get as many sales as it can.

Theres many on the internet who think this should be a ps4 exclusive just because Yakuza is on sony's consoles.

Breaking news............. SCREW YAKUZA and it's exclusivity, and screw those who say we don't need Shenmue 3 because we now "apparently" have a better successor in the shape of Yakuza.

Shenmue>>> Yakuza today, yesterday, last week, last month, last gen, the gen before that and forever.

Stop toying with my feelings. :(

The then and the now are different times. Open world adventure games werent as popular as they are now.

Also, the myth has been baking in the internet for quite a while. If they make a visually impressive game that adapts to modern design, it will undoubtedly become a million seller. Especially if it has Sony or Microsoft backing it in the advertisement front.

Of course it's closer to being announced. We're a decade closer to eternity.

You'd be exactly right too. People would roast a new Shenmue game alive. The spiritual return of Panzer Dragoon didn't fare so well, so I think a series like Shenmue would be laughed off in the modern age. Compared to everything that's been released since, I don't think the mechanics have aged well enough to hold anybody's attention. What was good for the Dreamcast would probably only serve to bewilder people now.

The smart thing to do would be HD upgrades of Shenmue 1 and 2 first. I don't know the first thing about the franchise and there's no way I'd get into it at the 3rd game. But I'd give the first game a go. Though obviously if it's Xb one exclusive then it's a moot point.

I would say though, if Shenmue is the game MS is banking on to become a relevant console in Japan, they are deluding themselves. In fact if Sega wants to make money from Shenmue then they need to release the HD collection of 1 and 2 on all platforms (including PC) and do the same with Shenmue 3. Otherwise I hope they get paid a lot from MS to make it a Xb one exclusive. If Shenmue is released on its own as a Xb one exclusive I can see it selling about 250K in total, and that's only if it releases once Xb one has a user base in Japan of 2-300K.