Final yr at The Recreation Awards, Sega introduced new entries in a number of franchises inside their backlog, together with Jet Set Radio, Loopy Taxi, and Streets Of Rage. Right now, one of many firm’s executives confirmed that one other traditional Sega franchise might be punching its approach again into the limelight, as a brand new Virtua Fighter has been confirmed to be in lively improvement.
Talking with VGC, Justin Scarpone–executive VP and head of Sega’s World Transmedia Group–confirmed the existence of a brand new Virtua Fighter alongside the opposite legacy Sega franchises talked about beforehand. No different particulars on the upcoming challenge, or whether or not it is going to be half of a bigger transmedia strategy–like Shinobi, one other legacy IP, which has a sport in improvement and a film in production–were confirmed.
“So we have now a collection of titles in improvement proper now that fall into that legacy bucket, which we introduced final yr at The Recreation Awards,” Scarpone mentioned. “Loopy Taxi, Jet Set Radio, Streets of Rage, Shinobi, and we have now one other Virtua Fighter being developed. And so all that’s very thrilling.”
Assuming the brand new sport just isn’t a reboot or remake, the brand new Virtua Fighter can be the sixth entry within the preventing franchise, which ushered in a brand new period of 3D-based fighters when it debuted in 1993. The newest sport, Virtua Fighter 5, first launched for residence consoles in 2007 earlier than being remastered in 2021.
Sega’s transmedia technique started with the profitable launch of the Sonic The Hedgehog film in 2020–with the third movie in that sequence set for launch subsequent month. Different current Sega releases embody the Yakuza: Like A Dragon sequence on Amazon Prime Video, Sonic X Shadow Generations on consoles and PC, and Metaphor: ReFantazio from the Atlus wing of the corporate.