Kickstarter in a perfect world is great for consumers - we get what we want. And it's great for business - they can judge the true demand for a product before producing it.
Shenmue has without question taken this long because it is a risky venture and Kickstarters very purpose is to eliminate as much risk and possible to try and make the impossible possible. It has only made losses to date. If you weigh up everything I think that the best decision for all parties was Kickstarter. Old games that create frenzied nostalgia such as Shenmue thrive on Kickstarter, the people screaming for Shenmue finally were given the chance to stand up and be counted and have done so willingly.
Sony is not going to do it for all titles going forward: they wouldn't want to give a percentage share to kickstarter to begin with... But so what if they did? They may even create they own crowd funding platform one day. Why does anyone not want business not to be clever with risk? Especially in the games industry where AAA devs are dropping because of risk that ends up in failure. The more successful these people are, the better the games are and consumers win.
Having said that, here are my main problems currently with the Shenmue Kickstarter:
1. I don't want the ideas to be crowd sourced, perfectly happy with the dev making their own vision, sometimes the consumer does not know what they want.
2. The stretch goals are poorly constructed and I hope they fix it very soon, the lost of momentum could cost them and backers millions in value.
3. If you are going to stand on stage at E3 and announce a Kickstarter you really should have a physical copy available for PS4.
Anyway, I'm going to stop moaning now, what a great day to be alive, I spoke to my best friend today and we have been losing our minds over this. So awesome.