Yu Suzuki Addresses Sony's Involvement in Shenmue Kickstarter
Fans have been a little concerned over Sony's involvement with Shenmue 3 considering the title is going through Kickstarter however Yu Suzuki, creator of the series, has addressed these worries via a Kickstarter update.
"Sony and Shibuya Productions are not seeing a cent of your Kickstarter dollars," said Suzuki. It is not regular business practise to outline publishing arrangements, as Suzuki states, but according to the update "in Sony’s case with some publishing support as well, Ys Net is able to use more of the money we collect through Kickstarter purely for Shenmue 3’s development. It is also important to note that your funds are going strictly to Ys Net for development of Shenmue 3."
Further on, Suzuki laid out what stretch goals will bring to the game including extra quests and events, new immersive gameplay systems and, at the $5 million point, "there will be an all new gameplay feature".
Of course, as we have been told before, if the funding reaches $10 million players will be able to explore a "much larger, completely open world". Currently, the game is at $3,626,294 with 22 days left on the ticker.
In a recent Reddit AMA, Suzuki mentioned the possibility of allowing Paypal donations after the Kickstarter has ended to increase funding but this has not yet been confirmed.