When Yu Suzuki took the stage at Sony's E3 press conference to announced a Kickstarter for Shenmue 3, a sequel to a game series few modern gamers have even heard of, few could have predicted just how much money it would raise. In the first two hours it flew past the $1 million mark. By the end of its 30 day campaign, the project had become the highest funded video game Kickstarter of all time, bringing in more than $6 million.
In today's modern game development landscape, however, $6 million doesn't go too far. Even with additional funding from Sony and Shibuya Productions, Suzuki is upfront that the project could always use more money. He says as much in a new interview with Eurogamer.
"We're still trying to gather funds," Suzuki says. "Obviously, the more money we have the more we can do. Even if we don't get as much budget as the previous games, we'll still make this game.
"I could do with a bit more money!" he continues. "The game itself doesn't have to be gorgeous visually - a lot of the money these days goes into the graphics. If we perhaps compromise on the graphics and put more into the story, we can make a good game. The most important thing, to me, is that the game's interesting, and that it's something people want to play."
The development team is now accepting Paypal donations for the project as well, allowing for even more funding. With all that being said, it's still unclear exactly how much money Shenmue 3 has flowing into it. It has been reported that Shenmue 1 and 2 had budgets of around $70 million, leading some to wonder how Shenmue 3 can be made in 2015 for what many presume is a smaller amount.
"Kickstarter's finished, so we know what the minimum budget is," he says. "We completed the game flow at the end of August, this month we're testing the game engine for Shenmue to see how it works. The team's a lot smaller than when we was working on Shenmue 2. But the process is just beginning - at this point we only need a small team. We said we'd get it out for Christmas 2017. Now I've got to work towards that, because that's what I said."
Sounds like Suzuki and the rest of the team have a long road ahead of them. We can only hope the game is worth the wait.
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