Sadly, There Are Currently No Plans for Shenmue 4

I'm guessing this is somehow Sony's fault.

Well... that's it folks. We won't be getting an ending to the Shenmue saga in game form. That means that the anime is our only shot now.

Crap...

Confirmed Shenmue 4 will be a live service game where the collectibles from the gacha machines are NFTs. How much more accessible can you get?

Still need to watch that anime. Shame they didn't bother to fix the audio for the re releases. I think apparently the Japanese audio sounds better so might have to try that.

He had a one in a million chance to conclude the series and he chose it to make filler and barely advance the story. Honestly screw him and the series.

@Victor_Meldrew The Japanese audio is the one which was better in the HD collection since it was already good in the original compared to the dub which was already lower in quality on the Dreamcast/Xbox versions.

@Bentleyma It was a decent game but had some things going against it like the ending not feeling complete again and the awful food system which should have been used to replenish health after fights instead of needing to be used for everything. Plus it didn't help that it was crowd funded which couldn't help the game feel a little bit more modern.

I see.

@WallyWest Are you telling me that his fans waited for almost 18 years and only wanted an ending to the story, and they put their money where it counts and gave him 6 million in addition to undisclosed other sources and he chose to make a filler story?????

Why there was no a big backlash or was I under a rock or something!!!!

I am shocked and enraged although I have never played the series.

The anime is nice and contempt with the show finishing the saga.

No one care this game anymore.

Ouch, this hurts, but I'll never give up hope.

Well look at it this way. Shenmue set the stage for Yakuza. They took Shenmue’s concepts that were a bit half baked and drastically improved them.

I will say that I loved Shenmue II’s setting. Always had a love for the 80s China aesthetic. When I got my OG Xbox in early 04, it was one of the games I bought with it since it was like 15 dollars.

I wish I would have gotten to experience the Japanese audio. Years later I “watched” the story with the JP vocals. The English dub really hurt that game, although the cheese was sort of entertaining.

@Dr-M

Yeah it was a pretty big controversy.

That and the game tends to run like booty. Framerate is all over the place and the game is needlessly CPU heavy on PC.

@Enuo Sony helped him promote the game in PlayStation E3 2015 did you not watch that or heard a news about it.Maybe you should blame Sega.

@Uncharted2007
Did you honestly want another game after the terrible S3?

I was honestly disappointed with the third game, I still own the first two for Dreamcast and I think they were better than the third, I thought they were great at the time. The fighting was better, you didn't lose health by just running. I've yet to finish the third though I have a 'day one' edition, I got to a particular battle after a long series of fetch quests that I couldn't win, and just gave up. After waiting years for the continuation of the story, Shenmue 3 made me lose interest instead. I may try finish the third game at some point, but I'm not anticipating a sequel in the same way any more.

I don't wanna be this guy. But that is his fault, He had the opportunity to wrap it all up with 3 but pissed it away. I respect what he accomplished with the series. He had almost 19 years to get all of the story squared away but look what happened.

Have to say, they shouldn't have expected they would get another after Shenmue 3. 3 should have tied up the story within a trilogy. Actually surprised they tried to eek it out after the long process of getting 3 made.

@Bentleyma I enjoyed Shenmue III, but the concept was really poor to keep the gameplay exactly the same. There are some basic quality of life improvements that would have been easy to implement whilst keeping the essence of Shenmue. The choice to Kickstart the game was either one borne of desperation or, was very damaging as it set unreasonable expectations to stay too close to the orignal games.

@MisterXpoSay pretty sure that comment was a joke.

@BoldAndBrash Yes. I enjoyed the third as it was Shenmue with updated graphics. The only things I didn't like about it was the stamina gage being added and that the story didn't really move much. Everything else was spot on.

I had hoped the 4th was already in the works and that he had secured the funding to make it a finale.

@Dr-M Yeah its basically filler and the story has barely moved at all.

@MisterXpoSay Uuum I'm pretty sure he was joking and being sarcastic because people are always complaining about Sony on here for anything they do it was a joke about that

I get the idea of an Opus. But honestly he had the funds and the time to make Shenmue 3 truly epic. And wrap up the whole series. Instead he just went with another episode in the saga and then later said he always planned it for 7 total episodes. Rather ridiculous.

Never played any of 'em and they honestly look super wack to me. This coming from someone who has spent over 500 hours in the Yakuza/Judgment series.

@Keyblade-Dan yes I thought that he was joking about it.its just that some commenters here are toxic and I know how the online world runs.

@MisterXpoSay True

For me Shenmue is the most oddly endearing franchise I've ever played. Any negative light on the franchise makes a guy like me sad lol. Something about it just hit so different when it dropped that I've just out and out become enamored with the world and characters. It's an acquired taste and S3 was literally made for the few that feel the way I do about the series. I really hope 4 happens and he wraps it up. He isn't getting younger and neither are the fans.

Not that much of a surprise because 3 barely happened right, wasn't it put on a kick-start or something to begin developing? Or was that something else

This article is merely speculation, he wasn't going to unofficially announce a fourth game at an event for the anime, and Shenmue III was NEVER intended to end the series.

This is what happens without E3 stadium shows.

The games were garbage. The remasters were 2 of the most tepid, boring games I've ever played. The 2 days each it took to plat 1 and 2 felt like weeks. The only positive is that they influenced Yakuza and any of the games in that series are better than Shenmue in every conceivable way. Suzuki was given another chance to end the series and he just strung people along in the mental belief that people would indulge his nonsense for another 2 games. Not a popular opinion I'm sure but there we are