Shenmue III is delayed again and will be released in 2019

Developer Ys Net and publisher Deep Silver have announced that Shenmue III will be delayed again. The game will not be released in the second half of this year, but sometime in 2019. The extra time is needed to improve the game.

Due to the delay, the game will also be released “in the best possible time”, the developer reports on the Kickstarter page. Presumably the developer and publisher want to release the game during a period when there are no or fewer other releases that compete with the game.

It is not yet clear when the game will be released in 2019. According to the original plans, Shenmue III should have been released in 2017, but in that year the game was already delayed for a year. More than $6.7 million has been raised through Kickstarter for the development of the game.

Shenmue III is made by the studio of Yu Suzuki, the developer who conceived the series. He has been given the freedom by Sega to make a new part. Sega still owns the rights to the series and recently announced that remasters of Shenmue I and II will be released this year.

The first game in the Shenmue series was released in Europe in late 2000 for the Sega Dreamcast and was one of the first open world games.