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Shenmue 3 is going to need at least $10 million

Last week at E3, the Shenmue 3 Kickstarter campaign was announced live on Sony's stage. At the time, we didn't know much about the game's funding or its stretch goals but slowly, the full story has been making its way out. While the campaign kicked off with a $2 million funding goal, Shenmue 3's creator, Yu Suzuki, has revealed that ideally, he needs $10 million to make a fully open world game.

The Kickstarter first had a few stretch goals reaching from the $2 million mark up to the $3.5 million mark. However, the big ideas apparently won't implemented until the $5 million milestone, at which point, we will see the Baisha Village expanded.

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During a Reddit AMA session, Suzuki said “If we reach the $5 million mark, one of the things I really want to do with Shenmue 3 will become a reality”, he later said that Shenmue 3 will “truly have the features of an open-world” at the $10 million milestone.

Right now though, these bigger features are currently not known. Either way though, it sounds like Suzuki needs a lot more money to make this game good than we were originally led to believe. Which actually makes sense as the original Shenmue game cost around $47 million to make at the time.

Right now we know that while Suzuki is hoping to gain the majority of Shenmue 3's funding from Kickstarter, Sony will be contributing financially, although we don't know to what extent. For the time being, it seems like Sony's involvement is being downplayed in an effort to get as much money out of the crowd funding campaign as possible.

Either way, the Kickstarter campaign is going fairly well, although it has slowed down a little. The initial $2.5 million for the game was generated in less than a day. Now the amount raised sits at $3.5 million with 25 days left to go.

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KitGuru Says: I do think that the campaign could have been a bit more upfront about how much money it really needed in order to make the Shenmue sequel everyone is really hoping for. After all, $10 million is quite a bit more than the initial $2 million the campaign sought after. On top of all that, we know Sony is financially involved but we don't know to what extent, which makes the whole thing a bit more confusing.

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14 comments

  1. ahhh raising free money as much as possible on kickstarter and then charging the fanbase once again with $60 when the game releases. Good business model.

  2. Gary 'Gazza' Keen

    I saw this coming when I saw the $2mil funding goal. Didn’t the first Shenmue cost like $70mil or so to make?

  3. Actually you give $29 you get the game for pc or ps4.

  4. Dave John McCullough

    From what I have read and heard the game development is going to be paid by the crowd funding. The financial support from Sony to get the exclusive on console is the marketing budget is going to be all them and they will do the marketing too. Sega have also said they can use the IP and also provided a lot of the original stuff they still had.

  5. Gary 'Gazza' Keen

    The underlying point he’s making is that you’re paying twice

  6. ^This. Because some people can’t read!

  7. Chances are they will set up a website afterwards and continue taking payments there like with star citizen

  8. If it reaches half it’s stretch goal, I suspect Sony might sweep it up completely and make it a Sony exclusive. Ironic, since the second game was Xbox excusive. – Sony rubbing salt on the wound like usual 😉

  9. Shenmue 2 was not an excusive both are availble on the Dreamcast the platform that the first title launched on.

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  11. Sony were smart enough to use Shenmue 3 as an emotional moment at the E3. I bet whey will also be smart enough now to back off and have as little to do as possible with the impending fiasco it seems to be going to end up as.

    Played both Shenmue I and II on my DC back in the day. I wonder how suddenly the game got so popular considering that, statistically, not even a tenth of the crowd going crazy for it ever played it or know what the hell is it about

  12. I hope so, I don’t think they can accomplish it any other way. The news of Sony funding it has really soiled the reputation of the Kickstarter.

  13. I think for me if it was another game i would be annoyed but to be honest being such a long awaited sequel i really do not mind how it gets made just as long as it does and i can really see that publisher would not want to take a chance on a game without some of the risk reduced. I just do not want publishers to start seeing kickstarter as a preorder platform.

  14. “After all, $10 million is quite a bit more than the initial $2 million the campaign sought after. On top of all that, we know Sony is financially involved but we don’t know to what extent, which makes the whole thing a bit more confusing.”

    Exactly. Kickstarters are taking advantage of people, and it will only get worse imo.