New Virtua Fighter project announced by Sega

What will it be?

Sega has revealed a brand-new project about the iconic Virtua Fighter series. There’s very little information to go by for now but this new game will put esports front and center. That much is clear. Here’s the announcement trailer.

Toyko Game Show 2020 is continuing to bring the goods with plenty of game reveals and new details. Sega has now joined the merry train and announced Virtua Fighter x Esports Project. Yes, the game doesn’t even have its proper name yet. Maybe that’s an indication for just how early it is yet.

Still, it’s huge news for fans of the Virtua Fighter series. The venerable fighting game franchise pioneered 3D fighting back in the 1990s and still has a cult following. With the most recent entry being over a decade old, it should come as no surprise that the mere mentioning of the name by Sega has sent fans into shock.

Virtua Fighter, which was born as the world’s first 3D fighting game in 1993, will be restarted as an esports title in Japan to commemorate the 60th anniversary of SEGA’s establishment. Stay tuned for more details on the project in future updates.

Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown was the latest iteration of VF5 which originally came out way back at the start of last-gen for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. An outstanding fighting game on its own right, the franchise went into hiatus. It didn’t help that the different releases of VF5 lacked in content and functionality like online support.

Keeping that last part particularly in mind, even the project title Virtua Fighter x Esports alone is a great sign that Sega is trying to rectify past issues by focusing on what makes fighting games so good, to begin with. Competition.

There’s no release window for the new Virtua Fighter or which platforms it will be aiming for.