^^I have kind of a hard time believing they reached out to a third-party dev, worked out a contract, had them conceive the game, visually design everything, compose music, and animated that entire trailer in the few days since Shenmue I & II came out.
This has been in development for at least a bit longer than the time the ports have been available to make money. So no, Shenmue probably has little-to-nothing to do with it.
Whatever the case, it is nice to see Sega resurrecting such an old and seemingly-forgotten IP like this. Loved SoR back in the day. I have great memories of playing the original with my brothers when we lived in a crappy little apartment in Maryland for a summer. We didn't know anyone else in the neighborhood, but we had our Genesis, and SoR was the first new game we got after arriving there (the others being... I think DecapAttack and Chiki Chiki Boys? Man, great freakin times).
If I can be a bit of a buzzkill for a moment, though, I do have to wonder... what's really the point of this?
I mean, sure, it's early to pass any judgment, but it looks like the "sprites" are just re-skins of the old ones, with the characters pulling off the same old moves as before. Likewise, the enemies are all just re-skinned, and the developer is a western company, rather than, say, Koshiro's own company Ancient.
It's great to see the series return, but it's not like beat-em-ups offer much variety, and the stuff we've now seen is just a recycle. And aside from maybe some music from Koshiro himself, there's no indication that anyone from the original development teams is involved.
So... what is the point? Couldn't we just go back and play the originals?