Shenmue 3 is well on its way. A new update from Yu Suzuki, its creator, was posted in the game's Kickstarter campaign page. Some important stages of the game had already been finalized. Suzuki is planning to take Shenmue 3 at the 2015 Tokyo Game Show in September and in China at a game show called CHUAPPx2015 in October.
Suzuki had been very accommodating and generous to a point, as he was interviewed and had even shared a diagram showing the game's progress. The whole interview can be read in the game's Kickstarter page.
According to Segment Next, his team had provided a chart showing the game's progress. They had recently finished the Composition, Story, Planning, and the Game Flow. Shenmue 3 will undergo another six more stages after that; and the last stage where they debug and test the game.
Asked to elaborate the Composition stage, Suzuki said that Shenmue 3 is based on the 11 chapters that were created 17 years ago. Each chapter has a different setting. He confessed, though, that a chapter would not be enough for just one region, so, he had to reconstruct some stories in the process to suit the whole breadth of Shenmue 3.
And thanks to the Kickstarter campaign, Shenmue 3 will now come to life after 13 years. As the project raked in $6.33M in the crowdfunding platform, Suzuki is now planning on the overall budget for development. He and his team had already mapped out the Game flow stage, as most of the budget will go there. This stage includes placing various cut scenes, events, battles, and quests in order.
Meanwhile, all these announcements and excitement over Shenmue 3 got other gamers interested. According to VG 24/7, a surprising increase in sales of Dreamcast consoles had been posted ever since the game had been announced in E3 on June 15. Interesting enough, this was brought about by players who are bidding to have the two previous Shenmue releases.
Destructoid mentioned that Dreamcast consoles on eBay were originally priced at $15. But because of the demand for such, its price rose to as high as $100.
Whether this intriguing turnabout can still tally some significant sales on the old console's sales chart; or, gamers become suddenly interested of the game, these developments are all to the advantage of the upcoming Shenmue 3. Sony might as well try to ride on the hype, and start to draft their marketing plan for the game. Shenmue 3 is expected to be released in December 2017 for Microsoft Windows and Playstation 4.
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