The title should be updated since Sony is not actually part of this Kickstarter, they simply provided the creator with a platform to promote his project because they are fans of his work.

That isn't to say that they aren't potentially part of the follow-on funding deals though (which we know nothing about), since everyone is pretty sure that this Kickstarter is a "proof of interest" gate for further funding. You could never make Shenmue 3 with only $2 million dollars.

Why does it suck that they use Kickstarter? It's validating the idea, and helps to confirm that the market exists.

Despite Shenmue's critical acclaim, it's not certain that the market exists. For comparison , Yakuza 1 and 2 (Yakuza is basically a spiritual successor to Shenmue in many ways) only sold 30k and 50k in the US market.

So this now reached it's funding goal with 30k bakers, why does that confirm the market exists when Yakuza selling 50k copies is considered a failure ?

30,000 people are willing to "buy" this game 2+ years before it even gets released within just 10 hours of it's "announcement". There are still 31 days to go on the kickstarter campaign, and a lot of people who didn't watch Sony's E3 presentation yesterday are waking up to the news of this right now.

That means once the game is released, has an actual marketing/advertising budget, and word of mouth spreads, it's probably going to sell significantly more than that. They are also certainly going to port Shenmue 1 and 2, (since a lot of people will want to play the originals) so those should also sell reasonably well.

This is why, even as a very indie Kickstarter creator myself, I don't begrudge the big studio's use of Kickstarter this way.

I'd rather see a shift toward creators getting paid for the work they do, which they put in one way or another, and away from absolute dependence on the market for post-hoc validation. Not a 100% shift ("real artists ship"), but toward an economic model that doesn't leave creators so beholden to such narrow sources of capital as a single publisher.

> Or to put it bluntly: it fucking sucks when studios use Kickstarter when they are in no need of crowdfunding.

Well, Kick Starter is now mainly a marketing tool anyway. It helps increase "engagement" with Brands. Nothing wrong with that. Other projects aren't going away. And there are still other crowd funding platforms.

The phrase "this doesn't pick my pocket or break my leg" comes to mind.

Are you suggesting that 15 minutes on the E3 stage is worth $2 million+? I suppose that's possible, but it seems high. Or maybe there are additional promotions you are referring to?

Let's not forget the fact that the game is a sequel to a rather revolutionary game for it's time that cost $50M to develop in 2001. It has a lot to do with what you do with those 15 minutes, not just the time slot itself.