VF5 director explains decision to move online
Posted by Chris. Filed under Chris, Microsoft Xbox 360. Tagged with Virtua Fighter 5.
After the big news that Sega will include online play in Virtua Fighter 5 on the Xbox 360, sites are now posting their embargoed interviews with Sega developers. Yoshihiro Tsuzuku, Virtua Fighter 5’s Xbox 360 director, talked to Games Radar about the decision.
If you’ve been following Virtua Fighter 5 for some time, you’d probably know Sega chose not to include online play in the previously released PS3 version and said it wouldn’t for the 360 as well, because it didn’t think it could do so without compromising VF5’s gameplay.
“The biggest reason why we decided to include online versus play is because we received so many requests from the fans. It was quite surprising that there were many fans that expected online versus play even with lag,” Tsuzuku said. “Another reason is that the Xbox 360 has a great environment to realize this feature. Conducting a careful study of the development environment, we finally convinced that the online versus play can be implemented on VF5.”
Wait, what? Sega’s now listening to its fans? Holy shit.
[Via Games Radar, Thanks for the tip, FryedEuphonium and Soreda]
Tsuzuku admitted that it’s been hard to get the game running like they want to due to network latency and said that they can’t make it run as smooth as the arcade version. However, Sega is doing some “necessary tuning so that players can play the online features comfortably,” he added.
Lastly, VF5 is going to feature five network modes:
1. Human vs. human online battle using the VS Mode and Xbox Live.
2. Ranking of the above online battle.
3. “Score Attack” Ranking in ARCADE Mode.
4. “Clear Time” Ranking in ARCADE Mode.
5. “Clear Time” Ranking in DOJO Mode.
Comments on this article
There have been 6 responses to this article.
The last time Sega listened to its fans we got Shadow the Hedgehog.
Nathan
Posted July 6th, 2007 at 5:22 pm.
My thoughts exactly…
Aki-at
Posted July 6th, 2007 at 5:35 pm.
Hey, some of us LIKE Shadow the Hedgehog.
Anyway, I would expect the games online mode not to be 100% lag free. We’re just not at that point yet.
But if we want to play without lag we still have ” in the same room” 2 players classic vs. mode. The way I’ll be playing most of the time.
I do think it’s cool they’re adding online though, it’ll please many. I just wonder how it’ll change many of the characters tier listings. Certain characters may be much better suited to fighting online due to certain moves being more mashable than others. In short, the online will change a few things, but hopefully it isn’t game breaking.
We’ll see. But it’s nice that they’re doing this as MANY wanted it. Thanks Sega :)
Raidens Huge Laser
Posted July 6th, 2007 at 6:40 pm.
Apparently some of us have down syndrome. Don’t worry though, it’ll get cured some day!
I just hope the control stick works well, I don’t really want to buy an arcade stick for 59.99.
Kogen
Posted July 6th, 2007 at 8:38 pm.
VF5 (for PS3) is a rather odd game. It seems totally designed for online play in its quest mode, yet it’s not available. I’m not sure whether to think it was this whole “lag makes it worthless!!” idea that resulted in no online play, or if it was a lack of development time, but I’m quite annoyed that it wasn’t there to begin with.
Good thing that the 360 players get it soon, though.
SuitCase
Posted July 7th, 2007 at 12:47 am.
Actually, I think Quest Mode on Vf5, and Vf4 Evo was there to try to emulate the community aspect of VF at the arcades on Japan.
What you could do in Quest mode was an emulation of what actual people with their cards actually do in Japan. So that resemblance of online game is actually there… the community aspect of vf in japanese arcades make it seems like that. Its funny its seems like an online game because vf on arcade really tried to do that, just in per store basis and you going to different stores to play. So it was not not because they wanted to put online game from the beginning in the domestic version, but because they are pursuing from arcade vf4 and the vf.NET, to approach asyntoticaly a community game.
Soreda
Posted July 7th, 2007 at 5:28 am.