The Shenmue 3 kickstarter has now been updated to include a new statement made by Yu Suzuki regarding the funding and budget of the project. Lots of websites and some YouTubers have been questioning if people should be donating to the KickStarter, some thinking that Sony is going to ‘fund the game anyway’. Most of these allegations are put to rest by Yu Suzuki himself, again, considering this isn’t the first time he has spoken about Sony’s involvement.
Sony and Shibuya Productions have been wonderful partners because they believe in Shenmue and want to see the best for the fans and the game. Their investment in (and support of) Shenmue have helped to realize a sequel that will stand proud with its predecessors. While it is not business practice to discuss the specific details of such arrangements, I can say that with their assistance on the production and marketing end, and in Sony’s case with some publishing support as well, Ys Net is able to use more of the money we collect through Kickstarter purely for Shenmue 3’s development. It is also important to note that your funds are going strictly to Ys Net for development of Shenmue 3 – Sony and Shibuya Productions are not seeing a cent of your Kickstarter dollars.
Like I stated in our podcast, this is basically what I assumed: KickStarter money goes into development of Shenmue 3 while Sony helps with marketing (announcing the KickStarter at their stage is a big advertisement push) and helps publish it on PlayStation 4. I would consider this to be fair, considering as fans we want all donated money to go towards a better Shenmue 3 video game and not advertising. Having this deal set up lifts the burdan of YS Net of trying to also fund a marketing budget. One more thing to note is that the whole statement didn’t mention SEGA once, making me think they licensed the name as they would stuff like the vinyl release of the Shenmue soundtrack. That means that SEGA will just make a cut on top of what the game sells.
Yu Suzuki stated in the update that he will try to be more transparent about Shenmue 3‘s development. What do you guys think of Yu Suzuki’s statement talking about the budget of Shenmue 3?
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Shenmue 3 belongs on xbox. No sega game should be on ps4, Sony was a part of the dead of Sega consoles. I hope it will be released on xbox. Otherwise i have to buy a crappy ps4 just for Shenmue 3, because i love Shenmue games so much.
It’s on PC too.
First of all, Shenmue belongs to the fans, to Suzuki and to Sega, not to Sony nor to Microsoft or anyone else.
That said, this generation, the crappy console is the xboxone, not to mention that when we asked, Microsoft turned down Shenmue 3…
I agree with pretty much what you said, but do you have a citation for Microsoft turning it down?
I’ve never heard of it and find it a bit surprising they did. If not then I can only conclude that if it’s true it would have been due to the less than decent numbers the crappy Xbox port of the excellent Dreamcast original of Shenmue II (2001) – which did quite well on the Dreamcast – and likely would have at least matched if not done even better than the first Shenmue, had they not been locked out of the licensing arrangement for the American localisation due to the Microsoft deal.
Anybody got the sales numbers for it? It seems the Dreamcast original Shenmue (1999/2000) to this day was still vastly more successful then the 2003 port of the sequel.
So buy the PC version 😉
Guys were at 3.6 mill. I hope when we get the paychecks we add more. To at least have 5 mil
If it doesn’t pick up pace, at this rate, it will fail. It’ll be a big shame if we don’t get it to at least 10 million, especially after all those years. The game could be more ambitious than ever, and at least match the Dreamcast originals in scope and depth at that level with todays technology and production tools that were not available at the time. And the possibility of a Shenmue IV and Shenmue V are hinted as possible with this strategy and potential success of Shenmue III.
It was never going to get 10 million, this isn’t GTA6. It’s unfortunate that Suzuki decided to impose a $10 million goal, because it will make what was an insanely successful Kickstarter now look like a failure.
Shenmue III was never going to get 10 million on Kickstarter. It will be lucky to hit 5 million and that will be an incredible achievement. It’s my hope that Suzuki does manage to secure the rest of the money through other means so that we have the best game we can.
But yeah 10 million through Kickstarter was never going to happen. He became far too overly-ambitious with that one. Hopefully though whatever hangups fans may have had about donating (for whatever reason) were resolved with this announcement and that we can at least get over 5 million. This was never going to be a bottomless well, Shenmue is a niche Dreamcast series that has gone over a decade with no new entry. That it’s gotten to where it’s gotten is nothing short of a major achievement.
On our way to 3.7.
I ignore the 10 mill. I want to lay foundation with 5 mil seriously
As I suspected, they’ve now updated and doubled the stretch goals, there is a still undisclosed 11 million stretch goal and another beyond that, I knew that a game like Shenmue III this would at the very least need 12 to 15 million, however, to be real, this isn’t going to be possible unless they increase the time to 4 months or something like that and maybe perhaps include a few more collectible items for backers, as well as adding a Paypal option of course ~ https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ysnet/shenmue-3/posts/1275663
*Apparently, Sega will still have involvement after all, they will also receive royalties from the sales of Shenmue III even is they are 100% of the backing of the project.
We made it 3.7. On our way.
We need to raise from 3.7 to 10 million at least for the best Shen III or even 12 million for the complete package as it’s known so far, all in 20 days, what are the chances of that?
It’ll be a challenge to even get to 5 million at this rate.
Realistically, it’s going to have to extend the time to something like another month or two to reach even close to 10 million, and I’m not certain Kickstarter even allows that.
On our way to 3.8 now