I don't think we need outside confirmation to know that they were indeed talking to each other about Shenmue at some point in time. That is a verifiable fact.
Postmortem and all that jazz.
As for making the game, Sega owns the license, that is true. That doesn't mean they can't license it out to third party developers to handle and they don't seem to be in a hurry to let anyone else take a crack at the IP. Highly doubtful they'd let ANYONE else but him touch the IP.
I understand that, but that it was I mean as talking to him to make the game is useless. Sega owns the IP, so getting together to discuss what a game might be like is nothing more than that.
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