We have two forks here:
-If you were a fan of Shenmue, still wanted the next game, and thought some entirely charitable corporation was going to hurl $5 million+ at Yu Suzuki for hijinx by picking up the whole development bill themselves, you had an incredibly loose grasp of reality. Santa Claus and elves is a fitting example. Santa aint real, in the year 2015 this was always going to be going Kickstarter. The very fact Sony is willing to pick up the side-orders part of the bill is about as 'up' on whatever I could expect of the real world.
-Making Shenmue in 1999-2000 was at the very cutting edge of videogames. Graphics that were showing up PC, things like realtime day cycles and lighting, dynamic weather, crowds of people with AI and so on and so forth. SECOND to this, it was also a project that was first gonna be Saturn for a long time, but then went to Dreamcast which was like starting from scratch. THIRD, Shenmue's budget was for 2 gigantic revolutionary games, that essentially were getting made two times back to back. Making Shenmue in the year 2015 with Unreal Engine where you can often just drag and fucking drop day cycles, AI behaviours, from a suite that can even be accessed for free, is just a very cheaper proposition. FOURTH, Shenmue 3 is in rural China and not a city environment which I feel would need a slightly meatier budget for assets.