Well, well, well… it appears Sega has finally decided to bless us with new Virtua Fighter information. On Friday, the company announced that a new Virtua Fighter Direct presentation is scheduled for Sunday, May 11 (the final day of Evo Japan), and will be broadcast on Sega’s official Virtua Fighter YouTube channels.
Sega said it will “reveal new developments in the Virtua Fighter series” during Sunday’s VF Direct.
Interestingly, Sega pulled its announcement from social media — likely because the YouTube channels it was promoting aren’t live yet and the start time for the VF Direct was unclear.
The event could provide more details about the long-awaited Virtua Fighter 6. Or it could be about another Virtua Fighter 5 port, now running on the latest LG smart fridge because everything is an Xbox now. Sega hasn’t shared any more information on the new presentation, so whatever the (prematurely spoiled?) direct has in store for fans is anyone’s guess.
Polygon has since contacted Sega for clarification regarding the VF Direct 2025 Spring event. A rep for the company provided a statement regarding the deleted post, assuring us that the show will go on. “[We] can confirm that the VF Direct is still happening on Sunday,” the spokesperson said. “And a new post will be live later this evening (Friday, May 9). Stay Tuned!”
We’ll update this post with new information when Sega confirms the VF Direct start time.
The original Virtua Fighter took a very young fighting game community by storm in 1993. Virtua Fighter is a pioneer in the FGC for being the first commercially successful 3D fighter on the scene. The success of Sega’s technical fighter set the tone and paved the way for fighting games, specifically for the 3D fighting game genre.
VF has since become synonymous with revolutionizing a more grounded and skill-based style of play that influenced other fighting games like Tekken and Dead or Alive, and even inspiring other long-forgotten, ill-fated imitators like Fight For Life and Fighter’s Destiny (which was actually super dank).
Sega’s last brand-new entry into the Virtua Fighter franchise was 2006’s Virtua Fighter 5. The game started out on the Lindbergh arcade system before being ported to PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in 2007. Sega released updated versions of the game for almost 20 years with the latest version of the game, Virtua Fighter 5 REVO, recently arriving on Steam, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X (but not your LG smart fridge… yet).
Sega previously showed off VF6 during the 2024 Video Game Awards in 2024. The trailer showed off a new artistic direction for the game, with multiple characters looking a bit different. We’re looking at you swagged-out Akira.
