Shenmue 3 isn’t only the fastest game to raise a million dollars on Kickstarter, it’s also the fastest game to raise two million dollars.
The project was announced last night at Sony’s E3 press conference. It’s the follow-up the Shenmue 2, which was released fourteen years ago.
Shenmue 3 has steamrolled through its goal. Interest around the crowd-funded project has been strong enough for Kickstarter to tweet this:
Site performance is back up to speed. We’re still monitoring everything. We’ve never seen anything like this. Thanks for your patience! #E3
— Kickstarter (@kickstarter) June 16, 2015
In over nine hours, Shenmue 3 hit its two million dollar goal. That’s incredible.
Prior to this, the fastest projects to reach a million dollars were Pebble Watch, a…watch, and Project Eternity, a title from veteran developers Obsidian. Project Eternity reached a million dollars in twenty-seven hours before going on to rack up $US4.4 million, setting, then, a new Kickstarter record.
Via Statista, here are the fastest Kickstarter projects to hit a million dollars.
They will need to pencil in Shenmue 3 to the top of this one!
The project still has thirty-one days to raise even more money. Good, because as Shenmue fans will be quick to point out, the previous entries, Shenmue and Shenmue 2, were some of the most expensive video games ever made. The expectations for this long overdue sequel are bound to be very, very high.
To contact the author of this post, write to bashcraftATkotaku.com or find him on Twitter@Brian_Ashcraft.
Comments
11 responses to “Shenmue 3 Just Hit $2 Million, Setting A New Kickstarter Record”
Whoa!! Knew it would hit it’s target and then some, but didn’t realise it’d be so fast!
I don’t know, I was keeping an eye on it, and I think it took longer than 3 minutes to reach a million dollars.
As far as im aware, kickstarter servers were struggling to display figures in realtime. it took an hour before they started to catch up, hence kickstarters tweet.
Ah, okay. It was definitely going up while I was watching, but maybe it should have been going faster.
Shenmue 3 Just Hit $1 Billion, Setting A New Kickstarter Record
” Be warned: it’s looking for a cool $2 million, so don’t take this for granted ”
Its nice to see Kotaku you actually went back and crossed off this pessimistic line you posted yesterday about Shenmue 3 on Kickstarter. Im not pointing a finger here just using this example as I have been reading too many pessimistic lines on forums and other sites about many Sega games. Its unfortunate people don’t see how much money Sega could make right now if the Marketing was communicated properly. Plus Kotaku holds great influence since its such an amazing website – .. Thank you <3
would love to see the stretch goals at 10 million or something
Would be good if they used the additional funding pledged to do an HD remaster of the original 2 games or something. Would love to play through those games again with some minor improvements.
Unfortunately SEGA still owns the rights to Shenmue 1 and 2 (it’s one of the questions on the page). So we’re unlikely to see that happen any time soon 🙁
They would be crazy not to capitalise on the shenmue 3 train with a re release. The first one was only on DC and the second on xbox? Maybe they are difficult platforms to port idk..
2nd was on DC as well in Japan I believe but only there. But you’re right, the times right to organise a HD re-release, it’d be worth it for sure.