Excluding updated and expanded versions of Virtua Fighter, the last game in the series was released in 2006 in Japanese arcades - followed by a console version the following year. Since then, Virtua Fighter 5 has been re-released several times, while Sega has seemed completely uninterested in reviving the series.
But in recent years, there have been frequent rumours that Sega is actually working on a new Virtua Fighter, and when the company revealed at The Game Awards last year that it would be bringing several classic series back to life, it raised hopes of more Sega fighting games, further bolstered by the fact that Street Fighter 6, Mortal Kombat 1 and Tekken 8 all seem to have sold well.
Now, in a rather surprising move, Sega confirms that there is indeed a new Virtua Fighter in the works. Not with some cool pictures, a teaser trailer or a press release - but in a VGC interview. Sega's transmedia boss Justin Scarpone says:
"So we have a suite of titles in development right now that fall into that legacy bucket, which we announced last year at The Game Awards; Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio, Streets of Rage, Shinobi, and we have another Virtua Fighter being developed. And so all that's very exciting."
We're not given any more details than that, so we don't know what stage the project is at yet, but after waiting almost two decades for a new game in the series, perhaps it might be enough to finally get confirmation that something new is in the pipeline?