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Shenmue 1 & 2 might be getting remakes, if you squint at these quotes from Sega the right way

Shenmue remake

Gosh. didn’t Shenmue 3 do well on Kickstarter? If there was ever any doubt as to the enduring love for Yu Suzuki’s open world/brawler/warehouse simulator franchise prior to its crowdfunding campaign, the $6,333,295 raised by 69,320 backers made its popularity patently clear. Clearly, that got Sega thinking. People love Shenmue, ergo it might be a good idea to remaster and re-release the first two games. 

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Speaking with Marketing Week,Sega Europe’s marketing director Jon Rooke discussed a desire to get back to what the company used to be about, and part of that means capitalising on the popularity of its legacy titles such as the hallowed Shenmue.

“Yes, we want to innovate and back smarthphones and virtual reality but our key purpose is to go back to what the brand used to stand for,” said Rooke, “and I think the buzz around Shenmue 3 shows that people love our legacy.”

Marketing Week also claims Rooke confirmed that Sega areexploring ways to re-release the original two Shenmue titles. PC isn’t mentioned specifically, but if fans make enough noise about it (and hoo boy, don’t Shenmue fans know how to make noise) the publisher would surely listen.

More on getting back to the company’s roots from Rooke: “Sega was an innovator… But perhaps back then we were pushing boundaries a little too soon. Nowadays we know what we’re good at and the strategy is to be more gradual. Over the next few years, we want to use engaging content and marketing to remind the public why they fell in love with Sega in the first place.”

Shenmue 3’s Kickstarter campaign was a record-breaker. It raised $2 million in its first 8 hours, making it the first videogame campaign to do so. That $6.3 million total is also a record high for a videogame project. For scale, the tremendously popular Divinity: Original Sin 2 raised a total of $2 million.

Thanks, Marketing Week.