Shenmue III is an action-adventure game developed by Neilo and Ys Net, published by Deep Silver on November 19, 2019 for Windows and PlayStation 4. The story continues teenage martial artist Ryo Hazuki's quest to find his father's killer in 1980s China.
Director Yu Suzuki conceived Shenmue as a saga spanning multiple games. The first two games were developed by Sega AM2 and published by Sega for the Dreamcast in 1999 and 2001 respectively. The original Shenmue was the most expensive video game ever developed at the time, with an estimated production and marketing cost of over US$47 million, though this also covered some of Shenmue II and groundwork for future Shenmue games. Despite attracting a cult following and appearances in several "greatest video games of all time" lists, the games were commercial failures and Shenmue III spent over a decade in development hell.
At the 2015 E3 conference, following years of speculation, Suzuki launched a Kickstarter campaign to crowdfund Shenmue III, with Sega having licensed Shenmue to Suzuki's company Ys Net. It became the fastest campaign to raise $2 million, in under seven hours, and ended the following month having raised over $6 million, making it the highest-funded video game and the sixth-highest-funded campaign in Kickstarter history. Crowdfunding on other platforms ended in 2018, having raised a total of over $7.1 million.
13