People need to chill out lol. 110 will announce their big announcement when it's ready. Just because we don't get an announcement on Shenmue Day doesn't mean that it's the end of the world... We have one every month by the way
I feel like we really shouldn't be taking Yu's words seriously.
It was a PR answer, something that he has done for years. Even if he had been working on Shenmue IV for 2 years now, he's not going to come out and say that he's working on it and ruin a future announcement. It's just the way things work in the industry. He nearly fucked it before with Sony and the Forklift tweet and knows to not do that again. If he has found a partner (110 Industries hopefully), then there's no chance he is going to say "yep, I'm working on it" and announce it there and then. Think about it for a second from the publishers point of view. What you would rather have: Your game that you're spending millions of $ on announced with a 2 minute trailer, where you show off various aspects of the game through either gameplay or cinematic footage, or someone just say "Yes, actually I'm working on the game"...
Shenmue 3 is a prime example of how the press like to just take what little info they have (and what they choose to read...) and spin the shit out of it to fit their narrative. Shenmue 3 was bent over backwards and fucked from the very second that it was announced at the Kickstarter to the time it released. If I was involved in a future project in any way, I wouldn't show a single thing, or in this case, announce a single thing until it's ready in a state where people cannot shit on it.
As I said before like 50 pages ago, I cannot just tweet the CEO of Blizzard and ask him "Yo Mike, can you tell me if Starcraft 3 is in development please?". Never in a million years is he going to go "Yeh mate we working on it"... It's just how the industry works. You want your announcement to be a surprise for many reasons hence why they don't just come out and say it. It's more exciting for the fans, it creates a larger impact in peoples mind (mainly as it creates a massive wave of articles which equals eyes on the product, and in general more interest), and most importantly, it doesn't disappoint people for it being announced 3 years too early where they have to wait 2 years to even see a screenshot of the game.
Just be patient people. Our time will come. In the meantime, fuck all these clickbait "gaming journalists" who had a slow news week and needed their AdSense money.