Shenmue 3 Raises Over 7 Million in Donations

As you might recall, Shenmue 3 is happening after Sony and the developer decided that the best way to gauge the interest in the series return was to ask fans to throw money at the project. And they did. The Shenmue 3 Kickstarter was the fastest growing kickstarter ever, raising 2 million USD in 10 hours. That was enough to secure the game’s development, but developers Ys Net decided that they liked free money so they opened up a Slacker Backer campaign so that people could continue to donate to the game even as development progressed.

And people have been. To the point where just now they managed to break $7 million USD in donations, which, as per the law of Kickstarter, meant that donators unlocked a brand-new feature for the game: a lil’ something called Battle System Expanded: AI Battling.

This control system lets you automatically unleash the perfect technique in response to the opponent's positioning and distance. R&D for this system is based on Yu Suzuki's concept for players who are not used to fighting games or for those who want a full immersion battle experience. This battle system is highly compatible with, and will be an extension to the current battle system.

So basically it’s a way to make the combat in the game super-easy to accommodate people who are just in it for the story or the spectacle. Alright, sounds like the kind of thing they should have probably had available to begin with, but people were clearly willing to donate to make it happen.

But hey, don’t think Ys Net is done yet. There are $11 million dollars’ worth of incentives to unlock, so if you happen to have a solid $4 million you’ve been looking to throw away, then you could do that. If you really wanted.