Developed by Neilo and Ys Net, Deep Silver finally published Yu Suzuki’s Shenmue III for Windows and PlayStation 4. This comes as bad news for Xbox users who have requested Shenmue II to be included in the list of Xbox titles. Now, it is confirmed that Shenmue III development will not result in the game arriving on Xbox devices.
While that may be hard to digest for most people who were looking forward to this game on Xbox, it still is worth learning about the new game. Shenmue III revolves around Ryo Hazhuki’s mission to discover his father’s murderers in the 1980s’ China. This action-adventure game is perfect for those who are into martial artists and the general aesthetics of Chinese culture. Shenmue is listed in many sources as one of the greatest video games of all time.
Development bottlenecks delayed Shenmue III development
The demand for Shenmue III was so high that Suzuki was able to raise $2 million in just seven hours. The campaign ended when it raised $6 million for the development of the game. As a result, Shenmue III is the 6th highest-funded campaign in the history of Kickstarter.
Shenmue III took more than a decade to develop and most people were losing hope that it will ever arrive even on PlayStation 4 and Windows. Only 10 people worked on the development of this game. It should be noted that Sega got together a team of more than 300 people to work on the original Shenmue game. Fast forward to 2019, most of the duties were outsourced to external agencies. In fact, external agencies bagged close to 100 art and quality assurance roles. This may call one to question how authentic a game will truly be if everything is outsourced to external agencies.
Xbox users will not get to play Shenmue III
Initially, all games were produced in-house from start to finish. The growing trend of outsourcing various game development projects may urge one to wonder if newer titles will be released quickly. Unfortunately, even that does not seem to be happening.
Meanwhile, Xbox users still have the option of using Windows computers to play this game. If they use a MacBook and do not have either a PS4 or a Windows computer, then they will not be able to try Shenmue III.