Shenmue 3 Pushed Back to Next Year, Again

When Shenmue was first announced in 2015 (and raised over 6 million USD in a largely unnecessary Kickstarter), the publisher, Deep Silver, promised to release the game in late 2017. Which at the time struck me and others as a strange release date; after all, a game like Shenmue 3 (which would have to live up to the amazing standards set by Shenmue 2, and to a lesser extent, contemporaries like Yakuza) seemed like it should take longer to make than two short years. Well, we were slightly validated when late 2017 came and the studio had to announce that they needed to push things back a year to make the game as great as it could be.

Well, we’re fast approaching late 2018, and it seems we’re no closer to Shenmue 3, particularly now that Deep Silver has announced it has to once again delay the game by a year in order to "polish the quality of the game even further, to the high standards it deserves and release the product in the best possible time frame"

Game director Yu Suzuki had this to add:

To all of our backers, we are very sorry for the delay. After much discussion with our partners, Deep Silver, we have concluded that extending the release will allow us to deliver Shenmue III at its best. We promise to use this time to improve the quality of Shenmue III. We cannot thank you enough for your enduring support.

We were promised at the start of the year by the producer that we’d receive “many other surprises” in 2018 related to Shenmue: if this announcement has any bearing on those plans, we have yet to see. In the meantime, we’re just sort of forced to sit on our hands and wait some more, but if it’s in the service of making a better game, I’m down.