Sales figures?

[Tempest]

It would be nice to know, worldwide, approximately how many copies of Shenmue 1&2 sell once it goes live in Japan in the next couple of months.

[-__-]

We'll probably never know for sure, but it hit #2 in the UK charts week of release (unusually held up as some indicator of sales performance but idk why), and fans noted strong pre-order sales by checking the Amazon charts up to release. I think Adam Koralik said Sega were impressed by pre-order numbers too.

I think it did well out of the gate, but it's hard to say if it had legs because of being a niche game/reports of bugs going around.

[KenW77]

I think it sold well when it came out last month, but now sales seem to have slowed down a lot. Pretty sure it was profitable for Sega though.

[-__-]

That's good enough for me. I never expected gangbusters numbers, just enough to get the series back on Sega's radar in the future, and give people an opportunity to be introduced to these two great games again on modern platforms.

[Tempest]

I'd love to see something like "more than 100,000 copies sold"

[-__-]

100,000 total, or 100,000 on Steam? Total would be a low bar. Personally I'm hoping it exceeds the sales figures of the originals combined, which is definitely possible.

[Tempest]

What were the sales totals of the originals?

[-__-]

Originally posted by Rocky1138:

What were the sales totals of the originals?

Shenmue was 1.2 million.

Not sure Shenmue 2's numbers were out there, but it was less. Maybe even less than half of what the original sold? It definitely had a tough sales environment considering the death of the Dreamcast and coming early on to an unproven Xbox as a late port.

[R3N]

Originally posted by -__-:

Originally posted by Rocky1138:

What were the sales totals of the originals?

Shenmue was 1.2 million.

Not sure Shenmue 2's numbers were out there, but it was less. Maybe even less than half of what the original sold? It definitely had a tough sales environment considering the death of the Dreamcast and coming early on to an unproven Xbox as a late port.

http://www.vgchartz.com/gamedb/games.php?name=shenmue


1-Shenmue DC Sega 1.18m
2-Shenmue II XB Microsoft 0.32m 28th Oct 02
3-Shenmue II DC Sega 0.15m 23rd Nov 01

[-__-]

VGchartz isn't exactly the most accurate sales tracker out there, but let's just assume the ballpark is <2 million anyway.

This release beating that figure is not impossible. I'd say it stands a good chance based purely on Steam/PS4/XBO all being more successful platforms than the Dreamcast or OG Xbox ever were.

[ShadowAngel]

I'm pretty sure it doesn't sell that well on Steam.
I think just like Bayonetta and Vanquish it will sell once it gets a massive discount. Too many cheapskates, poor people and "I don't wanna pay money for a 20 year old game" people out there, hence why Steamdb's estimate is below 20.000 owners currently.
The all-time peak of players, at launch, with just 1,554 people kinda confirms that. Since then the average in August was 520 people per day, in September it dropped to currently 169.
In comparison, the 4 year old Banner Saga is currently on sale and saw a player spike up to a peak of 665 (all-time peak 4,436 back in 2014)
So, despite all the hype, Shenmue did some really bad/disappointing numbers.

[JefferyNothing]

It’s an 18-year-old game come on. It was only going to appeal to people who had already played it back then and those who were interested in it throughout the years that didn’t get to play it. Expecting millions of copies to be sold is just being nieve. However we won’t know more accurate sales figures until Sega or whoever details them.

[-__-]

Neither SteamSpy or peak playing numbers are accurate ways to divine sales numbers. Especially not after SteamSpy had to change their methodology.

There was another, lengthier post on here with more research citing games that had far higher *and* lower all-time peaks than Shenmue 1 & 2 with enormous variation in the sales estimates on SteamSpy. There was also some examination of trending games data too and how that didn't match up with the sales estimate, but that's getting into the weeds.

Cutting it short, we don't know how it sold on PC. SteamSpy is liable to be wrong by a wide margin in some cases, and based on other evidence and comparisons, Shenmue 1 & 2 seems to be one of them.

[Tempest]

Let's pretend it sold 20,000 copies on Steam. That's still $400,000. Not too shabby for just one platform for a 20-year old game.

[antraxx_argadi]

In my case, because I stuck to the vanilla version of the rerelease, I wouldnt even be counted as an ‘active user’ because I run the games directly through their executables. Because of this, my time in game is listed as ‘33 minutes’, a vastly inaccurate number.

Not at all claiming my decision is a common one, but it’s yet another way the numbers can get skewed.

[ShadowAngel]

Originally posted by Rocky1138:

Let's pretend it sold 20,000 copies on Steam. That's still $400,000. Not too shabby for just one platform for a 20-year old game.

Except that this number just shows that you have no clue how it all works.
Regional pricing differences already alter the actual intake by quite a margin. Look what the game costs in most regions. In Argentina they just pay the equivalent of 10 dollars currently (sale), in Colombia it's 20 dollars (normal price), in the arab emirates they pay the equivalent of 43 dollars.
Let's also not forget the probably not all that small number of people who didn't buy it on Steam but actually via a key seller and they usually have a lower price. I pre-ordered it for just 28,85€ from one of them. Obviously the key seller takes their unknown share from that as well.
So the actual take for Sega is a whole lot less, but at least you already substracted the 30% Valve takes from the Steam price, too bad that number is still completely wrong.
Then, let's not forget that d3t either already got paid for the job or take a share of the revenue for their work and further work (Patches), which further reduces the actual revenue for Sega.
Even if they did 400.000, i don't think a company like Sega (They made 135 million dollars profit in the fiscal year 2018) is happy with such a small sum.


And for the moron above who doesn't even have a name: I only said that Steamdb and Steamcharts (never talking about steamspy at all...) can be used as an indicator, you can take the number and get at least somewhat of an idea about the actual numbers. Never said the numbers are the truth and gospel. Maybe you should learn to read instead of instantly activating your fanboy defense mode.