Does Virtua Fighter Still Exist?

@HofHaH I like a lot of what you said and want to add that I really like that there is a textbook actually being written about FS (not sure if that's part of what you meant in the comment) and textbooks could easily be written about SFII too. Also those techniques are far from useless, however VF does a poor job at showing on the screen what the inputs were for the players when they're using various defensive techniques. Without knowing what to look for it is easy to miss the use of multiple high level and execution techniques that lead to seemingly simple 2p. The fact that the techniques are invisible to the untrained eye is not your fault @HofHaH and I agree it is SEGA's fault for not making it clear what is going on. Lack of clarity is what makes commentary for VF hard. I don't know about other commentators, but I find speaking about each exchange after a knockdown to be about the pace someone listening can understand what's happening while the commentator can still build hype, teach unfamiliar players what's going on and why they should be hype, and explain the choices the players are making and why. Between each knockdown are a ton of other choices that are just too fast to even try and commentate on, unless you have @cruzlink2 ' s baseball play by play calling abilities.

 

I wouldn't get on my SF high horse if I were you: SFV was a commercial failure. Only 1.5 million copies sold when it had an under-achiever sales goal of 2 million units. Street Fighter X Tekken was another flop.

The ignorant twits who hate VF are the same kind of uneducated cretins that practiced book burnings throughout history.

 

I honestly believe Final Showdown was a huge missed opportunity to revitalize the community.
VF4 Evo was a great game that gave the series another shot in the arm after VF4, but Final Showdown in many regards was an inferior product to VF 5 Online.
I honestly believe you need to release a full featured and great game to capture the masses and then people will stay for the great mechanics.
I feel street fighter 5 made the same mistake. Sure it has great mechanics but as a full featured game the masses did not seem pleased.

 

A part of the problem is "full feature" fighting game hadn't really been well defined until more recently. Time spent on other modes is time that could be spent on character balancing, moves, new characters, stages, movelist art rending and so on. I'm not sure how DOA affords to do all the work they put into their game or even MKX did with their story. I suppose looking at the game now it's maybe more clear why some games are still played while others are maybe dropped even by their own fans.

 

To be honest I read this kind of crap mostly from vf wannabes and people who are too used to 2D fighters and actually get overwhelmed at the first looking complexity of the game, whenever you read stuff like "100+ moves and useless techniques for each character", you just know who is writing it.

Highest level matches don't necessarily boil down to low-punch, but I get your point even though I hope you're kidding , it's just the same as saying that high level matches in SF boil down to fireball spam.

The community isn't toxical in the sense you mean, nobody who seriously plays the game boasts about how deep and technical it is compared to other fighters, this was mostly brought up by the press, and wannabes.

How?
Afaik, the players and meta that was developed in the paste are what made the game hard (not complicated), that was much before VF5FS came out.
AM2 tends to make the game easier in each iteration.

I've never found an information that wasn't clear enough myself, but if you see any please bring it up, so this could help adjusting stuff and beginners don't get confused.
I'm curious to see which information you find contradictory.

SF was already about to die when Ono pushed stuff around to make SF4, with the help of fans.
It has nothing to do with depth or gameplay, it's all about marketing and a truly committed and big community.

 

LittleGiffy, it's not so much that FS was a missed opportunity. It's more like we accepted FS with the caveat that it was the opening act for VF6 to be released one or two years later. Since that hasn't happened, people are looking at FS with resentment and disappointment that is in my opinion misplaced. Sega needs to accelerate their plans for VF6.

Nobody is having this conversation about Bushido Blade , Tobal, Toshinden , or Primal Rage. Those games are lost in the annals of history. Virtua Fighter was a juggernaut among fighting games to have survived and remained relevant this long. Twenty plus years.

 

Oh god please VF will not and can not go the way of those other games. I liked them but they were all deeply flawed. I pity the fans who seriously played those games. Poor souls.

 

Hate to break it to you, Trick, but in all the ways that matter, VF already has gone the way of those games.

VF5 and FS both maxed out at 250k units sold. If Bushido Blade or Tobal ever got a next gen update, they could beat those sales numbers in an afternoon. They would probably cap at 400k units or 500k units. As far as the home market goes, VF is over.

 

A clear signal to tell everyone Sega will not put anymore resource on VF is on the 20th anniversary, only give the fans a poor website, http://vf20th.sega.jp/

The console sale cannot compare the money they earn from VF arcade cabinet.
They only care about the JP arcade market, nowadays, Sega find many cost-effective way to earn money (mobile phone games, card games), selling in-game items, cards.

Even most 2D and 3D fighting games company start put more titles on the PC market (steam), Sega just sell a 2D VF2 .

Hope those talent sega staffs who make Virtua fighter series will leave Sega and setup a new company , buy the licence / the whole Virtua fighter IP from Sega, keep making VF games.

VF provide console players to customize the characters since VF4, it's a standard of game with good quality......but.....Nowadays Koei Tecmo only know selling those costume DLC in stupid pricing, Capcom even more stupid on selling both DLC clothing and characters .

Who care the costume? I willing to pay the same price of street figher 5
to have a VF2 or VF3 or VF4 PC port that is netplayable.

Previously Sega do a survery , the intention is not on porting old games to new console and PC, they just want to make MOVIE (base on their old game IP) .


Hope suzuki yu Or anyone will start a new kickstarter project on Virtua fighter.

 

The answer is simple:
different people do different things.
Person responsible for writing the story is not the same person as that one who is responsible for balancing the characters.
Person responsible for new character designs is not the same person as the one who is dabbing the story mode dialog.
etc.
Overall you can view it as game design =/= balance design =/= story design =/=
graphics =/= art

 

WTF where are you pulling this "numbers" from?

In US/EU, VF5FS sold over 300k "electronic copies" in 2 weeks only. In Japan, VF5FS exceeded target sale number in 1st week after release.
PS3 VF5 vanilla sold 49k copies in less that 3 days in Japan only. Worldwide, it was over 250k in 1st week.
Worldwide, Sega claimed that over 1 million of copies of VF5 vanila (both ps3 and x360) was sold.
This are official numbers presented by Sega.

Now while the numbers are not exactly awesome (VF4 sold over 2 mils of copies), they are not as bad as you claim. By far...

 

The money they use to hire that other person could have been spent on another balance or character hire. They're all related.

 

Unfortunatelly, no. This is not how it works
Things like ballance, moves, etc. are great for brand building.
But things like story, DLC costumes etc. is what ACTUALLY impact your sales.
So from business logic, people who make story are more important for your company (and revenues) that people who balance characters.

The point is that things like balance are for hardcore fans while things like story are for casual players. And depending on the genre, title and other stuff, casuals make about 80-95% of your sale numbers.

 

This might be a language barrier but we are in agreement on the core issue you made here in the post. Your no doesn't make sense in the context of my quoted post.

 

Can't wait to see Akira in 4k

There has always been a VF by generation right ? Maybe it's not too late ?

They need time and they still want to make the best VF and the greatest fighting game ever ?

 

Sega may very well have to do what a lot of people here regret (or may have regretted at one time or the other) and that's to competitively market the game towards casuals. Expect a huge amount of items to customize your character, tons of costumes, and the "glitz & glam" found in other games.

Another way to look at this is that Sega also needs to make this game transparent so that new players (mainly those who are familiar with fighting games, but aren't frame data divers) can make an attempt at doing something, and they can clearly see why that attempt was successful/unsuccessful. VF5FS made some strides in that direction by letting players visually see blocked moves with negative recovery, allowing for a proper punish, as opposed to seeing a blocked sweep that was -15, but you only knew that if you either eat Frame-Os for breakfast, lived in VF dojo mode, or frequented this site's wiki. The playing field has been somewhat leveled for both old and new players.

Let's be honest here, VF never really had much in terms of content that the "modern" casual gamer could sink their teeth into. The only VF that came close to it was VF4:Evo. It clearly had a ton of content packed in a 4.7Gb dvd. I know several people who had a blast playing the different modes, especially Hyper Mode.

(Kinda) Lastly, Sega simply needs to be open with ALL of the VF fans, not just Japan only. How many D.K. blogs were translated by Reno? Imagine if he weren't there to do that (S/O to Reno btw), how would we have known about the latest in VF5FS development? Sega simply can't speak to one portion of its fanbase, and expect instant money from everybody worldwide. Bamco and Capcom have been literally going on a "world tour" reaching as many of their fanbase as possible to hype build their upcoming (or previously released) games. When's the last time Sega had one representative do something like that? They need to change their market to meet today's standards, and that hasn't totally happened yet.

The sad part in this is that Sega was an American company in its origin, and regardless of whatever changes that they've endured up til now, you would think that the company would do their best to stay somewhat relevant in the American market (and worldwide for that matter). How long has have fans been asking for SA3, SoR4, Shenmue 3, VF6? Granted, Sega may be strapped for cash, but the question then becomes "What are they doing to make their company/brands more marketable?" They simply aren't competitive enough to compete with other companies, and tbh I wouldn't be surprised if they did something as drastic as Koei/Tecmo did with DOA5 and insert a few "key characters/costumes in VF6" to stay afloat.

The even more sad part is we've been rehashing these same sentiments for years regarding Sega and VF in general, and the broken record keeps spinning... and the broken record keeps spinning... and the brok--- you get the point lol...

 

You're right, FS could've been waaay better than what was presented. Granted, I'm glad it at least came out and we didn't get the "Final Tuned" treatment where we weren't even given that version, and had to wait for the next gen iteration at the time... I am still one of those who anxiously waits for some legal port of VF4FT considering how great it was imo, and having had the chance to play it during one of my visits to Japan back in '05.

It does suck that there were things in the arcade version of FS that was clearly omitted from the console version. I really wish despite the seemingly low budget Sega had that they went all out for the sake of retaining fans and ultimately getting new ones. Sure, it's considered a "niche" fighter by many regardless of the legacy the game has, but the game could've really made a huge resurgence similar to how NRS came back with MK9, and even Arcsys with Xrd.

 

I personally am still quite a fan of the Virtua Fighter Series. I own most of the console ports and arcade hardware for all 8 games in the series (including Kids and Remix). I would always love to organize a tournament at some point in my life especially using the original arcade hardware.

Would be amazing to challenge todays games with a Tournament of the original Virtua Fighter on Sega Model 1 Hardware.