Is modern take on fighting games holding SEGA back ?

Hi, I love to drop by from time to time and check the forums of my favorite Fighter.

Ever since MK9 proved to be much of a hit and many of the main stream fighting games started to follow the approach of filling in the games with story elements and cutscenes increasing the costs of production to appease a broader audience.People have been arguing (well online, youtube vids/comments, etc) that VF would need a story mode to survive and just be acceptable.

Our game doesn't have a story beside a few lines you read on the manual, but IMO it's the most unique fighter out there. I am a huge MK fan, but it's absolutely embarrassing to even think about firing up the story mode in front of adults. It's laughable, and had me not growing up with the majority of the characters, the story would have been flat out forgettable. Subsequent takes by Capcom and Namco with SF and Tekken have been even more pathetic.

VF has always been a series of a smaller appeal due to it's strictness and raw gameplay, but that's it's backbone and what makes it the best. Ever since I started the series with VF4, I couldn't help but feel caught in the mystery; how can a game be so bare bones and arcadish, yet feels more unique than most of the games outside ? There is something unique about the characters that we only know so little about, we have Akira, a Japanese guy fighting with a Chinese fighting style, difficult to master, wears white, fights ya in a dojo. Lau an old angry Chinese guy that in the latest game started to cough and loves fighting in the great wall, Shun and his river boat...simple, yet very attractive for me.

And then OST like
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gs-PO9VmmmE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLuw2x0BEH8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rYwRH7Ilfk

And recently in FS's Lau's :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqH3X0UmJg4

@1:17, you could just sense that the guy's end is near, I mean when I first heard it, I got some chills,

Bring on VF6, bare bones, great fighting system, arenas, OST and SOLD!

 

Virtua Fighter can just add J6 and all the stuff from the VF anime for a story mode, and it would be the best story mode ever made in a fighting game.

But you know with SEGA..................

 

See one approach to adding a story mode here:

https://virtuafighter.com/threads/microtransactions-for-virtua-fighter-6.20963/#post-401101