Shenmue creator Yu Suzuki has said that achieving 60 frames per-second for Shenmue III on the PlayStation 4 may be difficult; he’ll be aiming for a stable 30 instead. Speaking in an interview with DualShockers, Suzuki said that, “for the moment I’m thinking about 30 frames per second. 60 might be too difficult, but I’m not sure yet.”
Suzuki then continues to say that he’s still “currently testing the Unreal Engine 4,” and his reasons for choosing the architecture being its “portrayal of colors, the shaders and the rendering.”
They’re close to the image I have for the world of Shenmue 3. Unreal Engine 4 allows me to portray what I think the humidity and the smell of the world should be. If you see a scene in the desert, you will feel the dry air of the desert. I feel that I can bring those abstract qualities of climate and atmosphere to life using Unreal Engine 4.
Shenmue III was announced (sort of) back at this year’s E3 during Sony’s PlayStation conference. Instead of a grand reveal and a hype-inducing gameplay trailer, Suzuki left the fate of the game’s existence in the hands of the fans by coinciding his E3 presence with the beginning of a Kickstarter page.
The crowd-funding effort eventually went on to break records, and is now officially in development. Besides a general 2017 release date, developer Ys Net has been coy with releasing new information. But it’s still early days yet; there’s still plenty of time for new info to trickle out.