The interview was really interesting and informative. The tidbits about development and future plot elements were great...but at the same time I'm disappointed reading about Yu Suzuki's managerial plans to continue the series.

I would have preferred to learn about some new or better strategies than simply trying to gather a big amount of money, enough for developing at least two more Shenmue games with the same quality and production values as the first ones.

It's commendable on a personal level for Yu Suzuki to stick to its vision and be patient and all that, but if he doesn't make some sacrifices (make it episodic? Dreamcast-level graphics? 2D? not fully voice-acted?) I think there's a higher chance of him taking his full Shenmue story and his original plan to the grave (hopefully a lot of years from now :-)) than managing something he hasn't been able to achieve for the last 12 years.

Did you get a different impression aizen59? I hope I am deeply mistaken...

What I really hope is that III doesn't end on a big cliffhanger.

Make a semi-satisfactory ending with some open leads to exploit if chance happens to make a Shenmue IV.

I think (and hope) the scope of the story will go much beyond the initial motivation of Ryo for instant revenge.

There have been some hints that it actually may be about overcoming those feelings, and I don't discard at all that Lan Di might be not so bad after all, but a victim of a greater evil. Maybe Ryo's final victory over him will be his ability to forgive him (which Lan Di clearly did not achieve).

All they had to do was make a teaser showing environments. If the locations are as far along as Peter and LanDC say all they had to do was make a one minute trailer of the environments like the Monaco vid of Shenhua's house. Show the Chinese countryside, show the wind blowing in the Shenmue tree, show Bailu village, and details of the interior buildings, show one of the big buildings of Baisha and don't show a single character, all while beautiful music is playing. Until the end when the camera pans and we see Ryo and Shenhua. Fade out. Shenmue III, coming 2017.

That's all they had to do and we already know they have the capability of doing this when every video so far is literally something like this.

There really is no excuse for showing jack shit for well over a year and I do not blame a single person for rescinding their pledge.

I agree they should do this, but I don't think it would have been showable in the PSX keynote of today, where all other trailers were much more advanced and mature than that.

But it could be a monthly Kickstarter update or something like that...

I think this thread clearly shows another side of the passion that made all of us endure a 14 year wait for the sequel.

And I say that as a compliment!

P.S: Ziming, that free music is doing wonders right now :-)

I will only say I'm super happy with this update!

Of course the screenshots are early, but they feel like glimpses of a dream that I still find hard to believe will happen after so many years of waiting and uncertainty...

Good analysis, Telekill, but I think you should double the sales objective (or halve the estimated benefit). Not the full $60 of a game goes directly to the developer. I think the platform holder (Sony) takes around $10 of any $60 game. Steam takes 30% of any game sold on its store (I reckon PSN will be similar). Retail takes its cut from any physical sale, etc.

But yeah, if the Shenmue III project sells decently, and with the technical groundwork laid out by it, I think it's quite likely we will see a Shenmue IV to wrap the story.

It's only a guess, but since they are working with the original Dreamcast source code as a base,it might be more difficult to add another platform than if the game was based on UE4 or another modern engine.

And Switch has an architecture that is more unique than the rest, being based on ARM and Nvidia rather than on x86 and AMD.