Sega will likely reveal the future of Virtua Fighter at the next Japan Fighting Game Publishers Roundtable

We should finally figure out what that eSports announcement was about

Posted by Dakota ‘DarkHorse’ Hills • 2 minutes ago • Comments: 0

The Japan Fighting Game Publishers Roundtable is providing the FGC with a number of interesting behind-the-scenes insights into how their favorite titles are being made, but one of the most exciting bits of information from the most recent meet up involved one developer who wasn’t even present for the event.

Bandai Namco’s Naoya Yasuda revealed towards the end of the stream that Sega is apparently on board to come onto a future roundtable to talk about what they’re working on for Virtua Fighter right now.

“[Yasuda] talked to Sega, and they’re down to come on,” said Jiyuna translating the Bandai Namco eSports producer’s message. “Now is not the right time, but maybe next time we’ll have Sega on here discussing another 3D game.”

No further explanation was given as to Sega’s potential involvement, but many assume that it’s probably tied to the Virtua Fighter x eSports teaser the developer put out during Tokyo Game Show last year, which still hasn’t received any further details since.

“Virtua Fighter, the world’s first 3D fighting game in 1993, will be rebooted first in Japan to celebrate Sega’s 60th anniversary. Stay tuned for more news on this one!” read Sega’s tweet from September.

Whether their plans involve some sort of revival of VF5 or a brand new entry in the storied series remains to be seen though other parts of the marketing machine seem to be gearing up for some activity as well.

Interestingly, the official Virtua Fighter Japanese Twitter account posted its first official tweet in over four years as a New Year’s message and pretty much telling fans to look forward to more news here in 2021.

The latest addition to VF’s legacy, Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown, released over a decade ago in arcades with its final update coming in 2015

Since that point, Virtua Fighter characters have been pretty much relegated to cameo / crossover appearances in other games like Dead or Alive 5, Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

While it hasn’t received an official re-release, Final Showdown is available to play on modern hardware via their inclusion as minigames in the Yakuza series.

No expected date or time for the next publisher roundtable was revealed in the stream, but considering there was about a six-month gap between the first and second events, we might still have a bit of a wait on our hands to find out more unless Sega pulls the trigger before then.

The previously bleak future for Virtua Fighter fans appears to finally be opening up into something brighter, and now we just need to wait a bit longer to see what the next step in Akira’s journey is going to be.

If you want to hear the brief discussion about Sega, Yasuda begins talking about them around one hour and 16 minutes into the video archive.