Ys Net and Deep Silver today updated their Kickstarter backers with the headline “Release date Announcement by Deep Silver”. As we quickly scoured the project update it became apparent that unfortunately there was no release date to be found, but in fact Deep Silver was revealing the upsetting news that Shenmue III is delayed until 2019.

Shenmue III was originally slated to release in December, 2017.

Deep Silver has stated that the Shenmue III delay will allow the game to be more polished, to the “high standards it deserves”, as well as releasing the game at a more ideal time of the year. It seems Deep Silver were not willing to launch Shenmue III in the midst of this year’s holiday line-up of games, featuring heavy-weights like Red Dead Redemption 2, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and the next Call of Duty.

After a lengthy hiatus to the Shenmue series (the previous game launched in 2001 on Sega Dreamcast and the original Xbox), Shenmue III had an overwhelmingly successful Kickstarter campaign, with the funding smashing past the $1 million USD mark in less than two hours. With many stretch targets reached, the final amount of $6.6 million USD means Shenmue III will have plenty of additional content that fans seem to definitely be craving.

“To all of our backers, we are very sorry for the delay” said Yu Suzuki, producer and director at Ys Net. “After much discussion with our partners, Deep Silver, we have concluded that extending the release will allow us to deliver Shenmue III at its best. We promise to use this time to improve the quality of Shenmue III.”

So Shenmue III is delayed to 2019, but perhaps we will get some gameplay footage at E3 2018 which is just under a month away. The game will launch on PlayStation 4 and Windows PC platforms. For more information, head to the official Shenmue website here.