Back in May, SEGA promised to look into Shenmue I and II remakes in light of high demand from fans. Now, the company’s European boss, Jurgen Post, has said that although there’s still no green light on the project, it’s actively being looked into. Speaking to MCV, he explained the challenges involved in remaking the games including renewal of licenses and contracts.
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.
However, SEGA is just as keen to make it all happen and will do what it can. “Also within Sega, we have people saying that if we could do Shenmue I and II all over again, we’d definitely go for it,” said Jurgen.
In the meantime, players can look forward to Shenmue III, which is scheduled to release for the PlayStation 4 and PC in 2017.
[Source: MCV]
