VF5 on PS3 thanks to NVIDIA

By Tom Bramwell Published 30 June, 2006

Familiarity was handy, says AM2.

One of the reasons Virtua Fighter 5 is a PlayStation 3 exclusive is that the team was already used to working with NVIDIA graphics hardware, according to SEGA AM2 president Hiroshi Kataoka.

Speaking in an interview with Japanese Ge-Maga, partly translated by IGN, Kataoka said the fact that Virtua Fighter 4 had been established on PlayStation 2 also played a part in the decision.

"There is the fact that VF4 had already been released on the PS2, but another big reason is that the [arcade technology] Lindbergh and PS3 GPUs are both from NVIDIA, so the technical barriers are low. Also, VF5 is tuned to the limits of the Lindbergh's capabilities, so multiplatform development would have been difficult," he said.

Kataoka also revealed that Virtua Fighter 5 was originally going to be shown off running on PlayStation 3 at E3, but that plan had to be shelved due to some scheduling problems. The game is currently in an advanced state of development on PS3 hardware, he said.

Fans of the series wondering what difference the PS3's support of both widescreen and traditional 4:3 ratio television displays needn't worry about the gameplay ramifications either, Kataoka said. "The arcade version was made to be compatible both with wide and standard monitors, so with that meaning, there's nothing to worry about," he told Ge-Maga.

Virtua Fighter 5 is currently in development for PlayStation 3, and expect to make it out next year. See elsewhere on the site for screenshots released earlier this week.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (29) Latest comment 6 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Blerk #1 6 years ago

    Does anyone still have a 4:3 telly?

  • itamae #2 6 years ago

    Yup, I do.

  • wolfen #3 6 years ago

    I do. It's large enough to do 16:9 without hassle, 'to.

  • Blerk #4 6 years ago

    Fight the system, you guys! Yeah! \o/

    :-)

  • neuroniky #5 6 years ago

    I do too. In Italy 16:9 are less succesful than elsewhere, here TV watching is much more popular than DVD watching, and even the digital channels transmit in 4:3. And there is nothing worst than watching something made for a 4:3 telly on a 16:9.

  • neilka #6 6 years ago

    I think 4:3 is more of an issue in the US where widescreen isn't as prevalent as it is here.

  • Cappy #7 6 years ago

    I wouldn't want a display in any ratio other than 4:3 for games. Gaming and watching films are distinct activities and 4:3 offers a much more usable 'space'.

    I suspect next time I replace my display its going to be even more difficult to find one in 4:3. :-(

  • JA$ON #8 6 years ago

    Sega are well and truly up sonys ass.

  • Blerk #9 6 years ago

    I think you'll be surprised how quickly you get used to having games in 16:9. I wondered about it at first too, now I find myself annoyed that more current gen games don't have the option.

  • Xerx3s #10 6 years ago

    I don't know. I mean, when I i.e. play FPS on a 16:9, I have alot more oversight than a 4:3 (i.e. with halo 2, HL2, etc.)

  • nickthegun #11 6 years ago

    jesus......will I ever get to play a VF game again?

    /had a saturn
    //no PS2
    ///or has any plans to buy a PS3.....
    ////and I dont live near the trocadero...

  • alimokrane #12 6 years ago

    ass kissers!

  • Rambaldi #13 6 years ago

    Wow, looks just like a 360 game: all that expert Nvidia knowledge, extra horsepower and extra money really paying off then!

  • Blerk #14 6 years ago

    Screenies are from the arcade version, btw.

  • Keimar #15 6 years ago

    The arcade version doesn't have health bars?

  • bionutz #16 6 years ago

    bouldercrap

  • peterfll #17 6 years ago

    Oh dear. If it's not bad enough having people endlessly debate the pros and cons of HD over standard we're going back to debates about 4:3 against 16:9.....

    :-(

    Anyhoo - I would have thought Sega should be making more effort to make most if not all titles multi-platform, especially on big franchises such as VF, unless one of the big guns wants to shell out to pay for exclusivity. Surely they should have thought about the technicalities of porting across graphic architectures and set up a porting process? Otherwise all their Lindburgh titles will suffer from the same problem. It seems incredibly short-sighted for a "multi-platform" company.

  • JonFE #18 6 years ago

    Does that mean that, if things were the other way around (I mean, the x360 sporting a nVidia GPU and the PS3 an ATI one) Virtua Fighter 5 would be x360 exclusive? Well, seeing that AM2 ported several games for the original Xbox but never a Virtua Fighter one, I don't think so...
    Edited by 2 at 30/06/06 @ 14:44

  • Netfreak #19 6 years ago


    So they shunned the Xbox 1 - Which had an Nvidia GPU, In favour of PS2. And now they are saying it's all about Nvidia.


    Well, people say a lot of stuff when they are paid with the right amount of money.

  • Hmmm #20 6 years ago

    Damn. I only recently picked up a second hand Ps2 so that I could play VF4 after enjoying the first 2 on Saturn like 10 years ago.

    The third one on Dreamcast was a bit pants - completely rushed and looked like a dog's dinner next to Soul Calibur and Dead or Alive 2.

    I'm really miffed about VF5 being PS3 eclusive. There's no way I'm paying anything more than 40 quid for a PS3 so I have *another* multi-year wait for the next version.

  • Rambaldi #21 6 years ago

    Something tells me I'd be a bit more concerned about all these devs licking Sony's ass if, y'know, I gave two hoots about any of the games they make. Now if Bungie, Bizzare or UbiSoft became Sony exclusives...maybe.

  • peterfll #22 6 years ago

    ..... or Criterion....

  • Rash' #23 6 years ago

    I've got all the VF games (except 1 sadly. Never got round to getting it), so I'm looking forward to my PS3. There were certain types of game the original xbox lacked. It seems Microsoft are still having difficulties solving this.

  • animal_mother #24 6 years ago

    "I'm really miffed about VF5 being PS3 eclusive. There's no way I'm paying anything more than 40 quid for a PS3 so I have *another* multi-year wait for the next version."

    40 quid for a ps3? You must mean the price of the game, in which case you'll find that xbox 360 games are 40 quid as well. In fact play are offering pre-orders for ps3 at £50, which is just utter bollocks. I refuse to pay more than £30 for a game.

  • uiruki #25 6 years ago

    "So they shunned the Xbox 1 - Which had an Nvidia GPU, In favour of PS2. And now they are saying it's all about Nvidia."

    To be fair, they made quite a few games with Chihiro, they just didn't bother themselves to convert them to xbox.

    [link url=http://ww w.system16.com/hardware.php?id=729
    ]http://ww w.system16.com/hardware.php?id=...[/link]
    http://ww w.system16.com/hardware.php?id=730

  • bluebird #26 6 years ago

    Found some better screenshots here:

    htt p://www.playsyde.com/pop_image.html?G=3207&N=1

  • captainrentboy #27 6 years ago

    Virtua fighter is ultra shit....And by that I mean i'm really really terrible on it so i'll just say the game is rubbish instead of admitting I need to put more time into it.Soul Calibur on the other hand is fantabulous.

  • Kikimaru #28 6 years ago

    captainrentboy, I love your honesty! :p

    Big VF4e fan here, but am I gonna buy a PS3 just for this game?
    Not a chance!
    After all:
    1PS3: €500
    2 good arcade sticks: €100-150
    New TV/monitor that I'll probably need so the PS3 could play at "optimal" resolution: €400-500+
    So that's looking at a lovely grand for just one game? The actual cab starts sounding like a better investment...

  • Ak1ra #29 6 years ago

    If I really want to play this game, I'll buy the arcade version. I can still make some bucks of it > .