After Deep Silver relinquished the publishing rights to Shenmue 3, and new owner Inin Games wants to do everything possible to bring the game to more platforms.

Inin Games wants to publish Shenmue 3 on modern platforms. They want to target PlayStation 5, Xbox Series and Nintendo Switch as target platforms (but they even mention Mac). There’s no official announcement yet, but there’s already a Google Questionnaire from the publisher, asking what platforms we’d like to see Shenmue 3 on, what graphical and performance improvements we’d like to see in the game, and even asking the new publisher what our favorite moment in Shenmue’s history has been so far.

In the survey, the publisher says: “We know you’re anxiously awaiting a response from us, and we appreciate your patience. Our collaboration with YS NET has been very fruitful, but we are carefully reviewing all the details. This process takes time and we thank you for your understanding. In any case, Shenmue was a major franchise for the SEGA Dreamcast when it was released in 1999 on the company’s last console (mini-platforms are not considered new).

It is widely regarded as the first truly open-world game, and a lot of money was spent on its development, with Suzuki Yu and his team spending between $47 million and $70 million on development and marketing. That was an incredible amount of money at the time! Shenmue 3 was released five years ago for PlayStation 4 and PC, and it didn’t really complete anything, which is no coincidence, as Yu had planned for multiple episodes from the beginning.

In any case, Shenmue is a franchise that deserves a bit more attention, but let’s not forget that there’s not much of a $250-300 million budget available for the development of Shenmue 4 these days. If that were the case, it could only be financed by an oil sheikh, but even that would be highly doubtful.

Source: DualShockers, Google