Sony’s savvy gamble on the overwhelming nostalgia of Shenmue fans has unsurprisingly paid off; it’s less than a day since Shenmue 3’s Kickstarter campaign was announced at E3, and backers have already pushed the project past its funding goal.
Right now the game’s hovering at just below $3 million, almost a million dollars more than the initial goal. You won’t be surprised to hear the the studio behind the campaign wants to bump that figure up a fair bit higher.
“Thank you so much everyone!,” the team at Ys Net (headed by series creator Yu Suzuki) writes. “You have spoken and the message has been heard loud and clear. We want Shenmue! We have reached our funding goal of $2 million! But! We have Stretch Goals all lined up to make this truly the best Shenmue yet. Please keep the forklift trucking along and lift this Kickstarter up as far as it can go!”
Those aforementioned stretch goals include supplementary skill and ‘rapport’ systems to further customise main character Ryo and his interactions with the various NPCs in the game world. Spanish and Italian subtitles have already been unlocked (bit boring, really).
Yu Suzuki and co are hoping to release Shenmue 3 in December 2017, but that’s a very early estimate. At least we know it’s definitely happening this time.
