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Shenmue III Game's Crowdfunding Campaigns End at US$7 Million

The Kickstarter page for Deep Silver's Shenmue III PlayStation 4 and PC game revealed on Thursday that all crowdfunding campaigns for the game have concluded, and the project has raised a total of US$7,179,510 from 81,087 backers.

Series director Yū Suzuki announced the Shenmue III Kickstarter campaign at the PlayStation E3 press conference in June 2015 with an initial goal of US$2 million. The campaign met that goal within nine hours of launching before adding stretch goals for the previous games' cinema shorts, subtitles in five languages (German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese), rapport and skill tree systems, an expanded Baisha village setting, and five mini games.

The campaign eventually ended with a final amount of US$6,333,295, a record-high amount at the time for Kickstarter campaigns for games. The development team then reopened the crowdfunding campaign via Paypal later in 2015.

Shenmue III was originally slated for release in December 2017, but was pushed back to the second half of 2018 and then to 2019.

SEGA released the first Shenmue on its Dreamcast console in Japan in 1999, and in North America in 2000. The company released Shenmue II on the Dreamcast in Japan in 2000, and in North America in 2001. Shenmue II also received an Xbox version in 2002. The series was originally planned as a trilogy.

Sega released the Shenmue I & II game collection in North America and Europe for PS4, Xbox One, and PC on August 21. The game launched in Japan on the PS4 only on November 22.

Sources: Shenmue III Kickstarter page, IGN (Adam Bankhurst), Famitsu.com