Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter has said he believes upcoming PlayStation 4 titles such as The Last Guardian and Shenmue 3 won’t be major performers in terms of sales.
Speaking with GamingBolt, Pachter said that both franchises are fairly niche and as such won’t really have much appeal outside of Japan. In fact, he seemed pretty dismissive of Team ICO’s upcoming adventure in general.
“Whereas Sony… now, they don’t have as many big franchises, but they seem to get their big franchises out. The ones that get delayed are the lame ones. I mean, come on, The Last Guardian– however fun you think that’s going to be, it’s hardly Uncharted or The Last of Us. It’s a kind of a niche title. Shenmue is the same. It’s an okay title but outside of Japan, how many millions of units will it sell? Not very many.”
The Last Guardian is due out exclusively on PS4 later this year, with Shenmue 3 scheduled to ship for PS4 and PC in winter 2017.
Both games have been a long time coming, with The Last Guardian having first been announced for the PS3 at E3 2009. Sporadic updates followed, and at one point it seemed as if the game had been canceled; however, Sony confirmed at E3 last year that the project had shifted to the PS4.
Shenmue 3 has been anticipated by fans for almost 15 years now, with the last game in the series hitting Dreamcast in late 2001. The sequel has been rumored ever since, and while creator Yu Suzuki always maintained his interest in making the game, nothing ever materialised.
However, this all changed at E3 2015, when Suzuki-san joined Sony on stage to announce Shenmue 3 as a Kickstarter-funded project. The game later went on to raise $6.3 million and became the fastest video game title on the crowdfunding site to hit one million.