Shenmue 3 - Kickstarter Secures Sony's Co-financing

You didn't really believe a AAA title like Shenmue 3 could be made for 2 million dollars, did you? As it turned out, the Kickstarter was meant to prove there is indeed sufficient demand for a new Shenmue game. On that condition Sony agreed to co-finance the game. As you already know, Ys Net's Kickstarter campaign succeeded within a day. So Sony is officially on board now. Kotaku has some infos:

With Shenmue III, the rest of the money seesms to be coming from Sony. How much? No idea.

"Sony and PlayStation is definitely a partner in this game," said Corsi, "and it's going to be run through third-party production. We're going to help Ys Net get the game done, we're going to be partners on it the whole way, and really excited to see this thing come out in a couple of years."

In an interview with Engadget Sony Playstation's Shuhei Yoshida revealed this whole PR stunt wasn't their idea:

So I want to switch gears a little bit. I want to talk to you about Shenmue and crowdfunding. That was announced onstage on Monday and it's at about $3 million now. So let me ask you: Why did Sony PlayStation decide to allow that crowdfunding announcement as opposed to funding it?

Ah, no, no, no. It's a very exciting project and there are lots of PlayStation fans asking for it. But it's a Sega IP and of course Suzuki Yu-san is the creator. So somehow Suzuki-san was able to work out with Sega to allow them to Kickstart the project. And because we liked the project, our third-party relations team struck a deal to help Kickstart the campaign at the E3 conference. That's great PR.