Shenmue III has completely blown past its initial $2 million Kickstarter goal. Yesterday, in the latest Kickstarter update, the game’s developers Ys Net announced the final tallies the campaign garnered. The Kickstarter campaign for the game received a grand total of $7,179,510 from 81,087 backers.
The total amount comes after two combined campaigns to raise money. The first started after the game was announced at Sony’s press conference during E3 2015, and met the initial $2 million goal within nine hours. It would then go on to break Kickstarter records for totaling over $6 million during the first campaign. The second campaign was announced via Kickstarter update, and aptly dubbed a “Slacker Backer” period for fans to contribute money through PayPal on the game’s official website. This second campaign period was able to garner over $800,000 to achieve the aforementioned grand total.
In the latest update, Ys Net thanked fans for everything that they contributed by stating:
Quite an impressive score, isn’t it!? Seeing the final numbers, all of us here can’t help but feel all over again the immensity of the support everyone has given to make this project come true! Thank you!
Shenmue III is slated for release on August 27, 2019. This will be almost seventeen years after the original release of Shenmue II on the Dreamcast in 2001. The series then went on long hiatus following poor sales of the second game along with the original publisher and developer, SEGA, exiting the console space. Luckily, the series’ creator and director Yu Suzuki was able to license the franchise from SEGA for the development of the third game with new publisher Deep Silver. For new and old fans of the series, a dual pack containing HD ports of the original Shenmue and Shenmue II was released for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One earlier this year.
You can check out the original reveal of Shenmue III below: