I'm feeling pretty good about 2019. When the Kickstarter initially began, Yu Suzuki said he was targeting a December 2017 release date. I knew it would never make this date because of the amount of work that this game would require.
When the game was pushed back to the 2nd half of 2018, I thought the game would still need more time to polish so I wasn't surprised to see it delayed again to 2019.
The question is; when in 2019 will it launch? Of course, I'm as eager as everyone else to play, but I'd rather YsNet make 100% sure the game is as good as it can be.
Considering the Slacker Backer campaign is about to wrap up, and the rereleases of Shenmue 1 & 2 are just around the corner, it feels as if everything is lining up to put Shenmue 3 through the final stages of development. It's been a full 3 years since the game entered early development. I expect that we'll see Shenmue 3 finally get released sometime in fall of 2019.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say 9/9/19.