Shenmue 3 seems to be on the verge of death after the game's Kickstarter campaign was announced at the PlayStation E3 conference. From what we are seeing, the game might not meet its $10 million overall campaign goal needed.
After the announcement at E3 2015, Shenmue 3's Kickstarter campaign shot up and quickly reached the original $2 million target, but as expected, that is not enough to make the game.
The game's creator, Yu Suzuki, wants $10 million from Kickstarter to fully realize his goal, but with only 21 days left and only over $3 million pledges, meeting that target is looking unlikely from our end.
By the way things are going, we have to wonder what type of experience fans should expect because not being able to hit the $10 million mark would probably severely hamper what Suzuki hopes to establish. It may even take years and multiple campaigns for funding elsewhere to become an actual game that is ready for public consumption.
According to Suzuki during a Reddit AMA, he wants Shenmue 3 to be an open world game, and for him to do that, he needs $10 million from Kickstarter. If he can only get $5 million, then the development team would merely add more locations to the game, along with fun mini-games to give players something else to do.
"I will say this: if we reach the $5 million mark, one of the things I really want to do with Shenmue 3 will become a reality," he said.
"At $10 million, it will truly have the features of an open world," Suzuki added.
If it so happens that Suzuki is not able to gain what he really needs, he could seek funding from Sony, but it is not certain if the Japanese giant is willing to throw down on a title that only has a niche following.
In truth, Suzuki may have no choice but to announce the game is coming to Xbox One in order to reach that $10 million goal.
At the end of the day, Shenmue 3 is just a niche title that nobody seems to have faith with. Suzuki must have pitched his ideas to publishers to get funding, and to see him placing all his bets on Kickstarter just proves he was turned down.
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