Shenmue fans, here is some news that will definitely put a damper in your mood – it seems that the Shenmue III trademark application which was filed earlier this week with the European Office of Harmonization for the Internal Market (OHIM) has nothing to do with Sega, the developer of the game in the past. As a matter of fact, Sega has gone so far as to refer to this particular application as a “fake”, and they are looking into how such an application could have occurred at all, as it should not have happened. Since then, this false trademark was removed from the OHIM.
Here is a little background information for those who are interested to know – the most recent known official Shenmue release on a console happened to be the sequel, where it was localized in English for Xbox gamers all the way back in 2002. At first, Sega game designer Yu Suzuki wanted this series to comprise of 16 chapters, where the first two games did manage to cover nearly one third of that, in addition to a manga spinoff that carried another chapter. Unfortunately, the final chapters of the series would remain in limbo for now after experiencing poor sales figures and a double whammy of high production costs from the first two outings.
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