Yu has said previously about Shenmue III that he would have preferred to reveal it close to completion rather than the drip-drip-drip because of being on Kickstarter. If he's planning to announce something later this year, I'm presuming a 2023 release which I'm not really sure would be the case if it were Shenmue IV? Plus the aforementioned reasons of wanting to see how the anime pans out.Curious, what gives you this impression?
We don't know that they're not, tbh. It's quite possible YsNet has another project while Shenmue IV gets an extended prototype phase in the background with a small core team. Studios tend to have a lot of irons in the fire so they're not without a project for long.I've said it before. I think not working on shenmue 4 now would kinda be a mistake.
Even if they got a yes based on their 2020 pitch and Yu got his wish to bring the anime staff onto the project, you're still waiting a year or more for these people to free up, so taking on a side project isn't that strange or particularly detrimental to any Shenmue IV that may or may not be in development.
Not really. Whether it's in development or not, he's not going to let the cat out the bag in an interview and deflate any impact a real announcement would make.Well, that interview basically confirms S4 is not in development, the anime is our only hope to finish the story.
Even if they were told "no" to their 2020 pitch, the anime succeeding might change that to a "yes" if/when they take a second run at it. But overall it's inconclusive in the same way it has been for two years, so no real change.