Shenmue III

Shenmue III (シェンムー3) is an upcoming action-adventure open-world video game directed by Yu Suzuki and developed by his company Ys Net. It is scheduled for release in December 2017 for Microsoft Windows and PlayStation 4. The third game in the main Shenmue series, Shenmue III follows teenage martial artist Ryo Hazuki in his quest to find his father's killer in 1980s China.

The previous two Shenmue games were directed by Suzuki, developed by Sega AM2 and published by Sega for the Dreamcast in 1999 and 2001 respectively. The original Shenmue was the most expensive video game ever developed at the time, with an estimated production and marketing cost of over $47 million USD, though this also covered some of Shenmue II and groundwork for future Shenmue games. Despite attracting positive reviews and a cult following, the games were commercial failures and Shenmue III spent over a decade in development hell.

At the June 2015 E3 conference, Suzuki announced that Sega had licensed the Shenmue rights to his development company Ys Net, and launched a Kickstarter campaign to crowdfund Shenmue III. The campaign met its initial target of $2 million USD in under eight hours, making it the fastest Kickstarter campaign to reach that amount. It ended in July having raised over $6 million, making it the highest-funded video game and the sixth highest-funded campaign in Kickstarter history. On September 17, 2015, crowdfunding for Shenmue III resumed using the online payment system PayPal.