So a mere two days ago, Sega announced that in honor of VGBlogger the PS3’s first fighting title, Virtual Fighter 5, would ship on my birthday. Okay, this may just be a coincidence. Anyway, to follow up that bit of information, today Sega sent out a press release announcing that come late summer of ’07, VF5 would no longer be exclusive to the PS3 as a 360 version is already in the works.
Per Matt Woodley, Creative Director at SEGA Publishing Europe Ltd., “Bringing Virtua Fighter 5 to the Xbox 360 offers us a platform with power to handle the astonishing visuals, the complex and varied fighting styles of all the customisable characters and will undoubtedly put Virtua Fighter 5 into the hands of a gaming audience craving for a highly polished and credible fighting game.”
This is yet another in a list of recent “exclusive turned multiplatform” titles on the PS3 including Assassins Creed among others. This is good for gamers as more individuals will be able to play Sega’s latest in a long line of quality fighting titles, but bad for Sony as not everyone will need to purchase a PlayStation 3 in order to do so.
I was pretty surprised by this move, as for a year now at least VF5 has been touted and touted by Sega (not even Sony) as a PS3 exclusive, and recent info updates within the past week or so still were saying that. Plus every other console VF has been a one-console release, so it going multiplatform is a major first for the series. This is all good news for gamers though, as the VF series hasn’t really ever taken off in the mainstream despite being widely considered the best fighter in the business (by me especially :)), so it’ll do good for it to get more exposure. It’ll also be interesting to see how the two versions compare- see a PS3 release ported to the 360 for a change and see if there’s a difference.