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Shenmue III sold less than the publisher expected

Deep Silver and Embracer Group had higher hopes for YS Net's Shenmue III than it should have, now lowering its financial projections.
Jonas Mäki Editor Sweden 14 February 2020

It was an almost two-decade-long wait until fans finally got to continue the Shenmue saga with Shenmue III. But in the end, it seems as though not enough people care anymore, and we've had our suspicions that it hasn't sold as well as expected after failing to reach higher positions on sales charts all over the world.

Now this has been confirmed by the publisher's owner Embracer Group. While they won't share the numbers and apparently don't have the Epic sales date, they have now lowered their upcoming financial projections claiming it's "mainly due to Shenmue III performing below our expectations", which makes us think that the sales numbers are really bad.

The producer Yu Suzuki has previously said that he would like to make many more games in the series, but this makes it less likely to ever happen, unfortunately.

Thanks GamingBolt

Editor Sweden Jonas Mäki has written for Gamereactor since 2002, becoming an editor in 2007. He covers the video game industry across news, releases and the business side, with a particular interest in sales figures and where the industry is heading.
Full profile Gamereactor author since 2007 · 12,194 published articles
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