[Stephen]

Its not utterly genius at all. Its the way games used to be. You bought a game when it came out and that was it, the full game nothing extra at a later date or buts you couldn't get without buying extra things.

The way nintendo did the MK8 dlc was similar in a way. Announce two DLC packs which you could buy early, one was due out within weeks, the other was 7 months away or something. So in effect paying towards their development costs no doubt.

Square-Enix are developers and publishers, Sony do publish and in effect develop too as they own a number of companies now.

If Shenmue failed to make money it was the huge cost of the game, hence why they probably chose to use crowdfunding to get it made, and to show Sony there was still a market there so they would then drop money on the project.