A good reason to believe that Naughty Dog is involved.UPDATE

[sand4fish]

Well, at least I have "Joel Tess" and the video above to think that there's something in the air...

What do you have to think that it "doesn't mean anything"? Just because you say so?

You're right! Naughty Dog is more than willing to take away part of its budget on Uncharted 4 and put it in Shenmue 3. After all SHENMUE 3 > UNCHARTED 4. Everybody knows that!

[Esppiral]

Well, at least I have "Joel Tess" and the video above to think that there's something in the air...

What do you have to think that it "doesn't mean anything"? Just because you say so?

You're right! Naughty Dog is more than willing to take away part of its budget on Uncharted 4 and put it in Shenmue 3. After all SHENMUE 3 > UNCHARTED 4. Everybody knows that!

Ermmm, well, everybody SHOULD know that.

[disbeliever]

Well, at least I have "Joel Tess" and the video above to think that there's something in the air...

What do you have to think that it "doesn't mean anything"? Just because you say so?

You're right! Naughty Dog is more than willing to take away part of its budget on Uncharted 4 and put it in Shenmue 3. After all SHENMUE 3 > UNCHARTED 4. Everybody knows that!

With irony turned off, this is actually exactly how I feel, even though I loved all of Uncharted!

But how can you know how things work at Naughty Dog business-wise to make such assumption? After Uncharted 2 they did split into 2 teams, each of them taking care of development of Uncharted 3 and The Last of Us. They do exchange their experience and technologies with other SCE studios, after all it is a studio fully owned by Sony.

You'd wonder how easy things may work when it comes to budget for studios delivering premium titles, such as ND or f.e. Rockstar. Sometimes, a one simple phone call is enough and their budget grows by 1 Milion $ just to implement a feature they want to have in the game. The trust they put in those teams is huge, all of them having a conversion rate from one title to another by over 90%, which is the top of the benchmark in this industry.

But staying on topic, I personally don't think they'd put Joel Tess in there just to make fun of... some of us.

[sand4fish]

I personally don't think they'd put Joel Tess in there just to make fun of... some of us.

Only you to be exact...

But by your seriousness, I will try to argue with you here... If that what you said is true then wouldn't the studio make themselves known that they are collaborating with Yu Suzuki in some level, as this would definitely get Uncharted/TLOU fans hyped about Shenmue 3 and so help out with the campaign? They would like to minimize the cost of development as much as possible after all and save money for Sony right?

[disbeliever]

Nope... Oficially they wouldn't. Not yet, not at this stage.

Just hear carefully to what Adam Boyle said in the video I posted above... The things don't work so obvious and intuitive, they can't go straight forward when it comes to projects like 'another Shenmue sequel', it's not that Shenmue was losing money or anything... Sony is still not really sure if they want to invest in this project shit-ton of money, they are on board though! And how else can they help and make sure that the game will be at least good, on-par with the prequels? How can they contribute? AM2 was considered to be one of the greatest, technically skilled teams at the time. What is ND nowadays? Of course, it's all theory, who knows what's really happening behind closed doors. One thing remains though: Joel Tess... It's not Jacky Maru, Pai Yuki or hell even Ryo Di. And it's not random either. Unless Yu Suzuki is a huge TLOU fan.

[Axm]

That's akin to Insomniac getting funded by Naughty Dog. It doesn't make sense for a Sony owned company to invest in a Sony partnered venture when you can be getting the funding from the source.

Since they had a hand in it for some time now before this announcement, I like to think it's an inside joke by Sony since Last of Us is one of their biggest IPs and Naughty Dog one of their biggest first party devs. They might as well have put Nathan Drake or Wanderer from SotC since they own TeamICO too.

Outside of funding, any other type of collaboration is possible though.

[Axm]

I think it's also a joke on us.. that we are "The Last of Us".. the last of our kind. That Shenmue fans have been forgotten or atleast now, not forgotten.
But mostly what Kenny said.

[disbeliever]

Ok, so it looks like it has nothing to do with Naughty Dog after all, the name is just a coincidence as I found this:

Joel Tess: https://www.facebook.com/joel.tess.1?ref=br_rs

This guy works at Awesome Japan which seems to be connected to Shenmue kickstarter campaign in some way...

[Axm]

Treyarch and Activision are taking the Shenmue 3 project off of Yu's hands. They say the are rebuilding Shenmue from the ground up in hopes to reach a broader audience. You can customize your load out and switch between 1st and 3rd person on the fly. And the online maps support up to 64 players at once.