Although, the SEGA company wants remakes of Shenmue and Shenmue II a reality, an European executive of the developer named Jurgen Post said in an interview that these games have some difficulties to materialize.
After speaking to MCV, Post states that there is “definitely a desire” for remaking the first two games. “Even online, people are constantly talking about products they would like to see come back, and Shenmue 1 and 2 are probably in the top two places. We are looking into it. It is an old IP, it is a beloved IP–and not just by consumers, but also within Sega, we have people saying that if we could do Shenmue 1 and 2 all over again, we’d definitely go for it.”
According to Post, Shenmue and Shenmue II are perhaps some of the most requested games by fans; however, efforts to bring back these games are very expensive, in resources and time. Those are the predicaments in which they find these titles, which no longer seem so strong.
“The issue is that it is a big game. It is a project from many years ago. If we are to do it, we’d want to do a fantastic conversion to the current platforms, and there are a lot of licences in the game, which were cleared many years ago, so we will need to renegotiate those contracts. We are looking into it. We haven’t given it a green light, but it has our full attention,” said the European executive Jurgen Post.
Shenmue III is currently in development after being formally announced at E3 2015 and after founding a successful Kickstarter campaign. This title grossed $ 6.3 MDD, the most for a video game on that platform.
