$6M isn’t enough to make Shenmue 3 ‘gorgeous visually’

‘I could do with a bit more money’

$6.3 million isn’t enough for Shenmue creator Yu Suzuki.

Talking to Eurogamer, Suzuki said that while the game will be crafted in line with the funds available to it, the game “doesn’t have to be gorgeous visually.”

“I could do with a bit more money!” Suzuki said. “The game itself doesn’t have to be gorgeous visually – a lot of the money these days goes into the graphics. If we perhaps compromise on the graphics and put more into the story, we can make a good game. The most important thing, to me, is that the game’s interesting, and that it’s something people want to play.”

In addition to the record-breakingly successful Kickstarter campaign and funding from Sony itself, Suzuki launched a further PayPal fund campaign following this year’s Toyko Game Show.

“Kickstarter’s not the only source of money. There’s also funding from Sony and Shibuya Productions. Before we started Kickstarter, we had goals set around the budget – so if we only got $6 million, we’d create Shenmue 3 based upon what we could do with that $6 million.” 

We’re still trying to gather funds. Obviously, the more money we have the more we can do. Even if we don’t get as much budget as the previous games, we’ll still make this game.

“Kickstarter’s finished, so we know what the minimum budget is. We completed the game flow at the end of August, this month we’re testing the game engine for Shenmue to see how it works. The team’s a lot smaller than when we [were] working on Shenmue 2. But the process is just beginning – at this point we only need a small team.

“We said we’d get it out for Christmas 2017. Now I’ve got to work towards that, because that’s what I said.”