If you do the math. The budget for Shenmue III is adding up lowkey towards mid to high tier AAA level development.
Let's look at all parties involved. Kickstarter raised about 8 million alone. Since Deep Silver got involved with support, the game has gotten another delay which means more money poured into the budget. Yu Suzuki has hired the same company who did Uncharted to help with the character models.
You add in additional funding from Sony and possibly Sega on the DL and it's feasible to say Shenmue III is being developed on about a 25-30 million dollar budget
To put that into perspective, on average the Yakuza games receive about a 20 million dollar budget per game and you see what kinda fire Sega dropped with that.
Honestly just knowing that Yu Suzuki can develop this game at his own pace and not be restricted by budget concerns has me thinking that Shenmue III is going to shut a lot of haters up. The truth is that none of us have actually seen real time gameplay footage yet.
Recently the VA for Ryo had this to say about the game and it legit has me in chills
"The hardware has since evolved, and now witnessing the improved quality of Shenmue, I get goose bumps all over again thinking if this is what Yu-san had seen all along."
Shenmue III gonna be legit brehs. We almost to the finish line