Sony has just confirmed that now that the Kickstarter goal has been reached they are in fact helping with funding and development of Shenmue 3

[Roronaa_chan]

FragilE^ said:

Roronaa_chan said:
I still don't get why they thought this was necessary. It was always going to reach 2M, come on. Am I missing something?

They just wanted to squeeze some money out of the fans. That's it. And now that all of those people invested real money in the game, they will make sure to defend their decision and promote the game. Money!

Actually after thinking a bit, it makes sense. It's easy to forget the lead people we see aren't money man. Shu accepts and rejects pitches, but he still has to pitch too; he's not the top of the pyramid. In this case, Gio is the relevant guy. Most definitely not a money guy at all. He'd have to pitch this to the wallet string pullers. Those suits are likely people who don't even know what Shenmue is and they look at how long ago 2 was released and how much it flopped that no amount of "but the Internet wants it" is enough to thoroughly convice them. Internet says a lot of things, doing is another.