VF5 on PS3 thanks to NVIDIA

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.