It seems that if the fans want a sequel to a popular series badly enough, they’ll certainly pay for it. That’s certainly been the case when it comes to projects that appear on the KickStarter crowdfunding site, as projects like Mighty No. 9 (the spiritual successor to Keiji Inafune’s Mega Man series) and the recently funded Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (producer Koji Igarashi’s follow-up to Konami’s now-dormant Castlevania series) were able to rack up millions in funding to assure their development.
Now the latest success story has arrived, in the form of Yu Suzuki’s Shenmue III. The series first got its start in the early 2000’s on the Sega Dreamcast game console, where young hero Ryo Hazuki went on a quest to find a mysterious foe who killed his father. Along the way, Ryo faces encounters with foes, while interacting with the world on a much different level than other games offered at the time.
Both Shenmue and its follow-up, Shenmue II (which came out for the original Xbox) were fan favorites at the time, but over the past few years, Sega, the series publisher, balked at releasing a sequel, mainly due to developmental reasons. The company has fallen on financial hardship as of late, forced to stick with mobile development rather than console. So the idea of a sequel ever arriving seemed very unlikely.
Until this week at E3, that is. During Sony’s press conference Monday night, Suzuki came out with a unique pitch for Shenmue III using a KickStarter campaign. While the pitch was met with a certain amount of criticism from some fans (who felt that Sony should’ve just backed the game as a PlayStation 4 exclusive outright, instead of relying on crowdfunding), there’s no doubt it’s on its way to being the site’s next success story, as it’s already reached nearly $3 million in funding, securing its success and guaranteeing, in a way, that the story will continue onward.
Now the main question is where it will continue. Suzuki didn’t mention a specific platform that the final game would arrive on, leaving fans wondering which consoles it will appear on. However, according to this story from GamesIndustry International, Sony may lend a hand after all to assure some form of PlayStation exclusivity.
The publisher’s director of third-party development, Gio Corsi, explained that “if the fans come in and back it, then absolutely, we’re going to make this a reality,” he said, stopping just short of calling it a PS4 exclusive.
However, it’d be quite a catch for the company, especially considering the hits it announced at the show, including a long-awaited remake of fan favorite Final Fantasy VII and the revived The Last Guardian project, as well as more upcoming hits like Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End and Dreams.
With funding in place, Shenmue III is the latest title to show just how effectively KickStarter can work with the right campaign – though a legacy to back it up, along with avid fans, certainly doesn’t hurt either. More details about the game can be found here.
