Switch wrote: Yes, I think Yu confirmed it at MAGIC 2016 when he said "There will also be time-limited events in Shenmue III. If you don't clear them within the time limit, a bad ending will be reached".
I find the concept of "bad ending" interesting since it's almost a mandatory element in order to avoid an heavy paradox with players keeping Ryo away from the main quest for months or even years, making him and the characters within Shenmue's world forever young despite time passing.
Out of curiosity though, I would be very interested to see how far in time some would go before actually completing the game (of course using the waiting option in Shenmue 2 would be cheating).