https://www.pcgamer.com/shenmue-re-releases-were-planned-before-third-game-announcement-says-sega-exec/

Last week, Sega revealed the first two Shenmue games, originally released in 1999 and 2001 for the Dreamcast, are coming to PC. Now, John Clark, Sega Europe's vice president of publishing, has said this was planned internally for several years. 

In conversation with IGN at Tokyo's Sega Fes 2018, Clark says that the discussion to re-release Shenmue and Shenmue 2 predated the third game's 2015 Kickstarter campaign—but that the buzz generated by the latter underscored the series' wider appeal.