Shenmue 3 Release Date Confirmed For 2019

It's official: Shenmue III will release on PS4 and PC on August 27, 2019. The news comes from an announcement made by publisher Deep Silver at Gamescom 2018.

First announced in 2015 alongside a Kickstarter campaign to help fund the game, Shenmue III went on to rack up $6,333,295 from nearly 70,000 backers--a record for the most money raised for a video game on the crowd-funding platform. Once the Kickstarter ended, developer Ys Net set up a Slacker Backer campaign to keep collecting money from anyone who wanted to contribute.

Ys Net was originally aiming to launch the the game in December 2017, but wound up delaying it to the following year. In August 2017, Deep Silver signed on to publish Shenmue III, and soon the game was delayed again to 2019. A statement on Deep Silver's website read, "The extra time will be used to polish the quality of the game even further, to the high standards it deserves and release the product in the best possible timeframe."

The series kicked off in 1999 and received a sequel in 2002. If you want to see why so many people are fans of this series, you can pick up a collection of Shenmue I & II now on PS4, Xbox One, or PC.