Shenmue creator Yu Suzuki addressed this question directly in an update on the game’s Kickstarter page. Specifically, Suzuki notes that “your funds are going strictly to Ys Net for development of Shenmue 3 — Sony and Shibuya Productions are not seeing a cent of your Kickstarter dollars.”
Sony and Shibuya Productions have been “wonderful partners,” Suzuki says. He notes that the while the two are helping with producing, marketing, and in Sony’s case, publishing Shenmue 3, they’re doing it on their own dime.
Suzuki went on to lay out specific goals for the game. If funding reaches the $5 million mark, an “all new gameplay feature” will be added to the game. If it manages to reach $10 million in funding, a “much larger, completely open world will be yours to explore.”
The Shenmue 3 Kickstarter campaign has raised just over $3.6 million at the time of this writing, nearly twice its original goal of $2 million. The campaign comes to a close on July 17, so there is plenty of time left to hit the goals Suzuki outlined in the update.
A cult classic, Shenmue was originally released for the Sega Dreamcast in 1999. While not everyone loved the gameplay, it was a major step forward in both the level of detail and the open world it allowed players to explore. The sequel, released on the Dreamcast and later the Xbox, fixed most of the complaints players had with the first game.
Suzuki stresses that even if those stretch goals aren’t reached, Shenmue 3 will be a sequel “true to its name.” Still, he adds “it is my hope though, that together we can make this Shenmue just as revolutionary as the first two were.”
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