Shenmue 3 Raises More Than $1M On Kickstarter In Less Than Three Hours

Fans let out a collective squeal of joy when Shenmue 3 was announced at Sony’s E3 conference and then rushed to pledge their support on Kickstarter. In just three hours, the campaign has raised more than $1.36 million, more than half of its $2 million goal, from about 16,000 backers.

That means Shenmue 3, the long-awaited sequel to the series originally created for the Sega Dreamcast, is one of most quickly funded video games ever on Kickstarter, if not the speediest. Pledges that come with a copy of the game start at $29 for a PC or PS4 version. TechCrunch has reached out to the crowdfunding platform to see where the project stands.

According to Kickstarter, Shenmue hit $1 million in one hour and 42 minutes, making it the second fastest project to hit that amount, behind Pebble Time smartwatch. That makes it the fastest game project to achieve $1 million, usurping Torment: Tides of Numenera (six hours 5 minutes).

[Update: Shenmue hit its full $2 million funding goal in eight hours 38 minutes, which puts it second behind Pebble Time (one hour seven minutes) in terms of speed, and ahead of the Veronica Mars movie (nine hours five minutes).]

On Kickstarter, Shenmue creator Yu Suzuki said “we are balancing our ambitions for a grand sequel with the pragmatic realities of developing a game of this scale. It will not be easy, but I have dreamed of making this sequel for 14 years—it is time to bring Shenmue back!”

Check out our videocast of E3 here.