Shenmue 3 – could a fourth game already be underway? (pic: Deep Silver)

Fans have amassed a body of evidence that Shenmue 4 is going ahead after all, following comments by Lakshya Digital and Yu Suzuki.

To many people Shenmue 3 was the most anticipated video game sequel of all time but the game’s poor performance at retail made it clear that mainstream audiences weren’t really interested.

Together with the lukewarm critical response, that immediately put plans for Shenmue 4 (and Shenmue 5) into question, especially given how much money was raised through crowdfunding and outside investment – which might not be quite so forthcoming a second time.

Series creator Yu Suzuki definitely wants to see it happen though and so does Indian studio Lakshya Digital, who posted a message on Facebook that ended with the exclamation, ‘We look forward to working on Shenmue 4 very soon!’




Some fans have already taken that as confirmation that Shenmue 4 is in pre-production, but while that seems a bit premature a post on the official Shenmue forum has collected a range of evidence suggesting preliminary work has already begun.

Some of the would-be evidence is a bit of a stretch, but the two most convincing examples are a Famitsu interview with Yu Suzuki where he says he’s starting a new open world game project in 2020 and a tweet from writer/producer Cédric Biscay about moving onto the ‘next steps’ after Shenmue 3.

A video interview with Biscay also suggests the plan is to start work on Shenmue 4 as soon as possible: ‘If you plan on doing a fourth instalment of a game, you have to keep your team, so you need to start as soon as possible. Otherwise the team would leave and you’d miss your opportunity to make the new game’.

Even publisher Koch Media have been caught posting suspicious tweets, with the one below being a clear reference to Shenmue.

As the forum post also points out, there’s a lot of cut content from Shenmue 3 and even with its rushed conclusion the story is far from complete.

But it all comes down to money. Yu Suzuki and his team are clearly keen to do more, but will they get the backing they need to make another game?

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