Shenmue Dojo

It’s no secret by now that one of Sony’s big E3 “megatons” was the announcement of Shenmue 3’s Kickstarter drive for the PlayStation 4. With PlayStation LifeStyle scheduled to have a quick sit down with Sony Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida at E3, we, of course, just had to ask about it.

In our quick video chat with Yoshida, we asked about using Kickstarter to gauge fan interest in games in the future once again. Yoshida gave Harmonix’s Amplitude as an example of how Sony is handling Kickstarter for games. In addition to that, he mentioned that Suzuki is “flexible” in terms of Shenmue 3’s scope, and that he himself contributed $29 to the game’s Kickstarter drive.

So, the Shenmue 3 (Kickstarter) is the same way (as Amplitude). You know, they are passionate fans – a larger number of fans than Amplitude was – but it takes more money to produce a new Shenmue than a new Amplitude. So, it’s not a SEGA project. SEGA owns the IP, but it’s Yu Suzuki-san studio’s project, and his company is a very small indie studio. So he was exploring how to make Shenmue 3 because he wanted to continue the story and there are lots of fans, like in the video, kept asking him “where’s Shenmue 3?” So SCEA third-party department was able to agree with Suzuki-san and SEGA, so if the Kickstarter campaign is successful, then we know SCE third-party group will support in many different ways, including some funding.So, in order to make the Kickstarter successful, we decided to put the announcement in the press conference, because lots of people watch it. And then, it’s now successful, so it’s happening.

Suzuki-san, I think he’s being flexible in terms of the scope of the project. Depending on the funding, he will decide what will be Shenmue 3.That’s his message in the video – what game it will become depends on supporters – I supported it as well. I paid $29. [Laughs]

In related news, Yu Suzuki confirmed that Sony and Shibuya Productions won’t see a “single cent” of the Kickstarter money the game has collected so far (now at over $3.6 million with 22 days left in its campaign).

Stay tuned to our short video chat with Yoshida set to be published tomorrow.

NismoZZzz wrote: He's probably not a fan and just wanted to show support. That's like me giving $300 to a game I don't care about. Over 26,000 chose this route so I'm sure some just don't care and want to show a little support. Nothing more.