Shenmue I was the most expensive game ever created at the time, costing around $70 million, on Dreamcast hardware. It took five years to develop. Realistically, how is $2 million going to be enough to fund a PS4-era sequel, presumably with completely new technology (based on the trailer)?
The kickstarter may very well be Sony's attempt at gauging interest in the game before outright funding it.
It's easy for someone to answer a poll asking if they'd like a game. It's an entirely different story to put up your own hard-earned dollars to fund it's development.
Seems like a lot, but if you consider cost of translation, studio time, voice actors, etc, I can see it being 100k, especially if you want to pay the translators and actors fairly.
The translation is only text and subtitle, so no studio time or voice actors.
Shenmue I was the most expensive game ever created at the time, costing around $70 million, on Dreamcast hardware. It took five years to develop. Realistically, how is $2 million going to be enough to fund a PS4-era sequel, presumably with completely new technology (based on the trailer)?
From a simple technology point of view, game development for PC and PS4 using 2015 tools like the Unreal engine is a hell of a lot cheaper and easier than developing for the Dreamcast using 1999 era tools.
Team sizes have increased, development cycles have increased, the size and amount of content expected in games has increased. Just because you now have better tools, doesn't mean it's guaranteed to get any cheaper.
1. stretch goals are just sales goals, there's no reason they have to correspond to actual costs. 2. that's gross, not net. Subtract 5% for kickstarter, 3% for the credit cards, royalties for game shipments and reward costs, and you're probably looking at less than $50K 3. good professional translation costs ~$30K per man-month if you use an agency. I wouldn't be surprised if Shenmue contains more than a novel's wort…
As per 2. I fail to see how number of supported languages directly increases cost of game shipments (per unit)?
I'd say that just put arbitrary numbers in there since the project will require much more than $2 mil. to complete.
They got a fair amount of time to promote this at Sony's E3 event, so I imagine that the value of the marketing already put into Shenmue III is worth more than those 2 million, which begs the question. If Sony is willing to promote this so much, why aren't they willing to invest? Or to put it bluntly: it fucking sucks when studios use Kickstarter when they are in no need of crowdfunding.
Why does it suck that they use Kickstarter? It's validating the idea, and helps to confirm that the market exists. Despite Shenmue's critical acclaim, it's not certain that the market exists. For comparison , Yakuza 1 and 2 (Yakuza is basically a spiritual successor to Shenmue in many ways) only sold 30k and 50k in the US market.
So this now reached it's funding goal with 30k bakers, why does that confirm the market exists when Yakuza selling 50k copies is considered a failure ?
Shenmue I was the most expensive game ever created at the time, costing around $70 million, on Dreamcast hardware. It took five years to develop. Realistically, how is $2 million going to be enough to fund a PS4-era sequel, presumably with completely new technology (based on the trailer)?
1. stretch goals are just sales goals, there's no reason they have to correspond to actual costs. 2. that's gross, not net. Subtract 5% for kickstarter, 3% for the credit cards, royalties for game shipments and reward costs, and you're probably looking at less than $50K 3. good professional translation costs ~$30K per man-month if you use an agency. I wouldn't be surprised if Shenmue contains more than a novel's wort…
As per 2. I fail to see how number of supported languages directly increases cost of game shipments (per unit)? I'd say that just put arbitrary numbers in there since the project will require much more than $2 mil. to complete. You are right about points 1. and 3. though.
Point 2 is referring to fulfillment of Kickstarter costs, not translation. Backers on Kickstarter receive rewards with their pledges, which someone has to pay for, including shipping on not just games but also t-shirts, art books, and other novelties (most likely internationally). Part of the money earned will go towards that.
For those asking "Why was this announced at the Sony event?", note that according to the rewards, Shenmue 3 will be a PlayStation 4 exclusive for consoles: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ysnet/shenmue-3