Yu Suzuki posts Shenmue 3 Kickstarter anniversary update

It's been a year since Ys Net's hugely successful Shenmue 3 Kickstarter campaign got underway, an effort that ultimately pulled in more than $6.3 million in backer funding.

Kickstarter campaign got underway, an effort that ultimately pulled in more than $6.3 million in backer funding. To mark the moment, the studio posted a brief video yesterday in which creator Yu Suzuki talks a bit about where the development of the game currently stands.

The team has been “gradually bringing on new project members” since the Shenmue 3 announcement at E3 2015, and began doing “simple battle and conversion tests” using Shenmue 2 characters on Unreal Engine 4 late last year. “With our key developers on board, the prototype build started in January,” Suzuki says. “It has been six months since the project has really taken off.”

The video is mainly a “yes, we're still at it” sort of thing, but thedoes contain one rather important bit of information about Kickstarter backer surveys, which still haven't been sent out. An announcement will be made on all the usual channels (the Kickstarter page, Twitter, Shenmue.link) when it's ready to be sent out, but for now it's “still a ways off.”

Thanks, Polygon.