To me, the HD situation is pretty basic.
1. No matter what the obstacles may be (software or products licences), IF Sega wants to, Sega will do the remasters.
2. Sega is not going to do the remasters to please the fans but to make money, or at least to make enough money so they win on both "image" and "financial" sides.
3. Shenmue 3 is a great opportunity for Sega to bring back the Shenmue licence. It's like a second chance.
4. Some could argue that if Sega wanted a second chance for the franchise, they could have published Shenmue 3 by themself. Giving Yu the licence for the third episode was (is) a smart way to offer this chance without taking the financial risk. It's like saying to Yu Suzuki "Do your Kickstarter thing and let's see what happens."
We all know what happend and we never heard so much about Shenmue from Sega in 14 years compared to what they said since E3 2015.
5. One of my fear about HD remasters (and Shenmue 3) is that (maybe) Sega wants now to see how the project is evolving and what Yu will be able to achieve, before putting too much efforts into remastering Shenmue 1 and 2. That could lead the remasters to come out after Shenmue 3 in the "best" worst case scenario.
Now to go back to the actual position of Sega, I think that the first goal of what Jurgen Post said in that interview (considering what Sherridan said previously) is... to buy time.
Nobody knows if Shenmue 3 will make it for a 2017 release, maybe not even Yu Suzuki.
If Sega wants to announce/release the remasters short before Shenmue 3 is released (let's say 3 to 6 month?) in order to take advantage of the "momentum" for the franchise, they need to have some guaranteed release date.
Of course, my whole theory is based on the fact that the HD remasters are coming.
(I wrote 10/10 remember
)
Maybe I'm totally wrong there, but I definitely don't believe that Sega will wait after Shenmue 3 to announce/release them. It would be too late.