SEGAbits Shenmue III Hype Train! Update: Funded but lets go further!

[MadeManG74]

I think I'm not alone in saying Awesome Japan is fucking terrible at their job.

[Barry the Nomad]

They really need to open this up to PayPal donations.

[Aki-at]

They really need to open this up to PayPal donations.

I'd be willing to donate something monthly too for the duration of the development.

I'm sure I'm not the only one willing to do that either.

[max_cady]

Well, we already funded the Rapport System and the Skill Tree System. That's gotta count for something. Personally some of the mini-games and portuguese subtitles could be made available after the game's release as DLC (man, I'm starting to sound like a broken record).


Negativity aside, I wanna see more of Shenmue 3 in the coming months. I wanna how the game will play, how the controls will work with the PC and PS4 gamepad.

[Tad]

Yeah, the rapport system and skill tree sounds interesting. I wonder how exactly it'll work as we never had that before. Could it be linked to the mystical "power" elements the story was heading down?

The rapport system sounds like it might just be for a select few like Shen hua and Ren.

[Team Andromeda]

Dude, look at the bright side, Shenmue III is very much a reality. At this point, I don't care if those stretch goals aren't reached. If we get to 5 million so much the better, if not, we are still getting a Shenmue game out of it. (I'm still hoping for paid DLC for some of this stuff, tough)


And once that game is out, we'll make damn sure that it'll be profitable enough to get another sequel.


Anyway, two little tidbits:


Shenmue 3's offical Youtube Channel


New update - Interview with the character artist for Shenmue.

I'ts not a reality at all . We've got some 2 years to wait and no sign of Shenmue getting anywhere near a Budget of $20 to 30 million. which is what Yu really needs imo at the bare level . I think SONY actions stink in all  too, they're taking a lot of the credit for doing nothing and spending peanuts. I'm sure SONY have a funding limit of less than £1 million for indi/Kickstarter type games. .

Yu Suzuki should make it multi-platform, it's the only way Shenmue III will ever get close to a million sales and show there's a market for Part IV to finish the story .

[MadeManG74]

I'ts not a reality at all . We've got some 2 years to wait and no sign of Shenmue getting anywhere near a Budget of $20 to 30 million. which is what Yu really needs imo at the bare level . I think SONY actions stink in all  too, they're taking a lot of the credit for doing nothing and spending peanuts. I'm sure SONY have a funding limit of less than £1 million for indi/Kickstarter type games. .

Yu Suzuki should make it multi-platform, it's the only way Shenmue III will ever get close to a million sales and show there's a market for Part IV to finish the story .

I doubt making it multi-platform will raise multi millions from kickstarter.

Unless you meant another publisher would pick it up, in which case I disagree with you. If fucking SONY won't fund it, who would? Certainly not Sega.

[Team Andromeda]

Unless you meant another publisher would pick it up, in which case I disagree with you. If fucking SONY won't fund it, who would? Certainly not Sega.

Sony aren't funding it, SEGA Japan  are all but dead in the console world anyway and don't fund they own Console teams never mind Yu's . SONY had a piss poor E3 and almost used Yu Suzuki as clever easy cheap way of covering up a lot of cracks . Shenmue market is limited and unless Yu Suzuki makes it multi platform  Shenmue III will be luckly to get close to a million sales imo .


NamcoBandai might take a punt on it like they did with Project Cars. 

[pirovash88]

Finally someone agree's with me that Sony's E3 offerings were cheap. They ran Shenmue 3 and FFVII hype to death to save what little efforts they put into the show, it's a fucking disgrace.

Not sure how much money Sony will add to this game once it comes up short. It's a real shame, i'll still feel like we're not getting the "true" Shenmue everyone has been waiting for.

[Tad]

Finally someone agree's with me that Sony's E3 offerings were cheap. They ran Shenmue 3 and FFVII hype to death to save what little efforts they put into the show, it's a fucking disgrace.

Not sure how much money Sony will add to this game once it comes up short. It's a real shame, i'll still feel like we're not getting the "true" Shenmue everyone has been waiting for.

Can I just add, I never thought Sony had a great E3 either. The announcements made in their E3 show were good, but they've actually got very little in terms of exclusives this coming year or so it seems.

As for Shenmue...I really don't know what the answer is. I think perhaps if 1 and 2 were more widely available it would of done much better, but who knows.

[max_cady]

Well, that is a possibility. 14 years is long, long time in video game terms. Shenmue 2 was released in November of 2001. That's a lot, 2 whole console generations. And the Dreamcast didn't that big of a userbase to begin with. And Shenmue 2 on the OG Xbox didn't sell all that well.


I am sure that a lot of people in the mainstream gaming community are unaware of this particular franchise. And I doubt not many people know the story of the game all that well. Fortunately this game is going to feature Shenmue 1 / Shenmue 2 cinematics to get players up to speed... But I know it's gonna be an uphill battle.

[Tad]

This is just a guess, but the people who would probably like Shenmue are those that enjoyed adventure games and adventures like Quantic Dreams and Telltale. Many of which probably have no idea what Shenmue as they were either too young or didn't have a Dreamcast at that time.

[max_cady]

Man, the KS slowed down to snail's crawl literally. It's not gonna be easy to reach 3.8 million at this point.


Update: New Interview with Shenmue scriptwriter.


Interview with the Shenmue scriptwriter.

[Tad]

Yeah, it's not good:

https://www.kicktraq.com/projects/ysnet/shenmue-3/dailypledges.png

[Trippled]

Thinking about it, the reason why Yakuza continues today and Shenmue came to a hault is because of Yu Suzuki arranging 70% of non-Sega, non-video game related staff while also having multiple other pipelines at AM2. That probably isn't affordable or that profitable.

Yakuza today, on the other hand, pretty much has only staff that always worked in game development, including script writers.