I used to be one of the biggest Sega fanboys ever. I would have loved for Sega to still be in the hardware business and M$ to not even be in the console space. Sega and M$ had a partnership that had Windows CE as one of the operating systems in the Dreamcast. Which was as far as I would have liked M$ to be involved in consoles. But Sega made bad decisions and M$ wanted more and now we have Xbone. Blah blah... Enough of that crybaby shit.

So Sega became the go to developer for M$ for exclusives to battle PlayStation. We got Jet Set Radio, Panzer and Shenmue 2. All that was fine by me. M$ pays for exclusives and Sega is still ticking. Eventually Sony started paying for Sega exclusives as well.

Now we have this.... When Sony announced Shenmue 3 at E3, I was excited and thought to myself, 'good job Sony.' Until I heard kickstarter. OK, what's going on here? This some kind of twilight zone bullshit? Are you going to give it to us Sony or what? Then they play Shenmue music and walk out the maker. Ohhh my God. The music just made it sound depressing like this man is dying of hunger. It felt like I was watching a feed the hungry piece on TV. Why would Sega even put themselves this low? I felt so ashamed to be a Sega fan. Then they ask for money for him. He looked like he was in need and wanted help. Well shit, when is Sally Struthers going to walk out? I didn't know how to feel anymore. My excitement turned to pity, then to sadness, then to embarrassment, now to anger. So instead of paying for exclusives, we are now holding charities. Well fuck... I wanted the game, but not like this. I felt bad for the creator. Sega's pride took a big hit. It's like a father that can't take care of his own kids.

So what are you trying to say? That you rather would've seen Shenmue stay dead?

I am certain a MS+Sega would have become a dominant force where MS focused on hardware and Sega on software. Then we would've seen all episodes of Shenmue, I am not so sure of that now though.

I'm pretty sure MS had the chance to make Shenmue 3 a reality years ago.

How would you like it if Sony became a third party dev and M$ walked out one of Sony's greatest developers and asked you to kicksart their game on Xbone? A big title, like God of War or Uncharted.

To be fair, Sega has never wanted to make Shenmue 3. Ever, apparently. Otherwise they would have pursued it at some point in the past fourteen years. To Sega, Shenmue was an IP that was going nowhere fast, and they were more than happy to dump it and proceed with making many Sonic games that continue to make us cry tears of agony, most notably since Sonic '06 when the series completely jumped the bug ridden shark and has sort of almost recovered.....sort of. Not really.

Anyways, Sega has been in no position to make a game that could be a total flop. Some older third party devs aren't doing amazingly at this point, and I'm sure Sega is just following the money to avoid completely falling into the financial shitter from too many flops. If that means making Sonic Boom games that sell like crap with gamers but great with fans of the questionable TV show, they'll do that until the profits dry up. Sega doesn't want to end up in a ridiculously perilous Capcom level position if they don't have to.

As for Shenmue 3, the creator knew exactly what he was doing at the Sony press conference. He came to Sony before the press conference and knew what Sony was giving to the project: marketing and a PS4 port depending. If anything, he intentionally picked the time to present and got Sony to agree to it for maximum exposure, though it also ran the predictable risk of people assuming Sony was funding the project. It was something Shenmue's creator should have pointed out right then and there, not left to find out later and then hitting basically a full financial stop once the news spread far enough about the project's true funding source. None of this was on Sony because quite frankly, they did a stellar job presenting in a way that garnered a mix of sympathy and nostalgia.

But yeah, Sega don't care. They just said "use our IP and pay us x% of all sales" and Shenmue creator dude said "okay".

it was a realy clever move, shenmue 3 got the big spotlight, and sony won the E3 with just this move.
win-win.

I'm sure M$ would have paid for that in full and note embarrass Sega by prancing them on stage and asking for money for them.

There's not much money in Shenmue to justify the amount needed to fund it. Shenmue has a small but dedicated fanbase, and sony nor ms would fund an entire shenmue game. So in this case a kickstatter/limited experience is probably better

Both of those franchises are massive money makers though whereas shenmue isn't. You know what sega are like, I wouldn't be suprised if they held a kickstarter for a new sonic game.