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SHENMUE
It’s weird to call a game that sold more than a million units a commercial failure- but the circumstances in Shenmue’s case just weren’t in the game’s favour. Back when it released, Shenmue was one of the most expensive video games ever made, with a development budget of roughly $70 million, and even though the game did become a million seller, its sales were far from enough to recoup that investment. Shenmue’s own eccentric nature no doubt contributed to those slow sales, but more importantly, the Dreamcast was a failing system with a very limited userbase. Given all that, Shenmue was fighting an uphill battle from the word go.
