martedì 3 agosto 2004 - Sul sito Shenmue Online è disponibile il comunicato che posto qui di seguito in versione inglese.

SEGA , JC Entertainment , and T2 Announce Partnership for PC MMORPG Shenmue™ Online in China-

(Tokyo, Japan / Seoul , Korea / Shanghai, China) – August 3, 2004 – SEGA® Corporation and JC Entertainment Corporation today announced a business alliance to co-develop and co-publish Shenmue™ Online, a massively multi-player online game(MMOG) for PC platform. Also SEGA has the basic agreement with T2 Technology Holdings Inc. to allow T2 Technology to license China online game operation of Shenmue Online.

JC Entertainment will manage the content development, Korea online game operation and marketing of Shenmue Online, while SEGA will be also responsible for the content development and supervise the ongoing of development and licensing related to the online-game operations in each territory except Korea. In addition, Yu Suzuki, the creator of Shenmue and SEGA’s R&D Creative Officer, will supervise ongoing activities for the game.

By T2 Technology’s online game operation of Shenmue Online, the commercial launch is due to within 2005.
Also Shenmue Online will roll out in Korea, beginning with a private beta in November 2004, followed by an open beta and the commercial launch in Spring 2005. The online game operation in Korea will be managed by JC Entertainment.

The Shenmue franchise was established more than five years ago with the release of Shenmue (Dreamcast™) in 1999, then Shenmue II (Dreamcast™) in 2001. Shenmue boasted groundbreaking full 3DCG environments and over 1,400 characters alive in a virtual world where time passes and the weather also changes, as in real life.

Shenmue Online is MMO Action RPG in which tens of thousands of players will participate in the virtual world of Shenmue staged in China including Hong Kong in 1980’s. Players, acting as militants, will use mysterious powers, kung-fu, Chinese weapons and Qigong in real-time fight-action.

SEGA, JC Entertainment and T2 Technology will leverage a combined development, distribution power, and operation power to expand the online audience of Shenmue Online to grow their network businesses.