What VF Traded For Online Features & Rollback

I play VF5 to this day on the PS3. There is no online mode in VF5 for PS3. For the Playstation owners an online feature did not come until Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown (which the fans had to beg and petition Sega to release outside of Japan)

Since the release of VF5FS for the Playstation it appears the focus has been on only Online Features. For VF5US new online features were added and what remained of the single player features were dropped

Here are the features that we ultimately gave up to have online play and the hope of roll-back:

• Team Battle
• Single Player and Two Player Offline Replays
• Single Player and Two Player Portable Offline Player Profiles
• Wallpapers for the main screen
• Extensive Player 1 and Player 2 Advice & Statistics
• Single Player and Two Player Offline Leaderboards
• User Trainable AI
• Arcade Mode Challenges
• Kumite Mode
• Underground Tournament Modes
• Orbs
• Quest Mode
• Event Square Mode
• Sparring Mode
• Scoring Mode
• License Mode
• Announcers

In exchange for all this content we now have Online Features, Tekken Style Hit Sparks, Tekken Skins, and a Tekken UI.

I'm sure for the e-sports hopefuls this was a fair trade. But for offline only players, casual players, noobs, and players who prefer to fight against the CPU the trade is less than equitable

Now there are talks of a Virtua Fighter reboot in the works There are really no features left to take out of the game. And since RGG/Seiji Aoki have made it clear that the game will be e-sports focused, the likely thing a reboot will mean is RGG/Seiji Aoki is going to redefine Virtua Fighter as something other than what it is now. Of course I feel this is a big mistake Since this reboot is all about a money-grab, Sega would actually make far more money by dropping the online features, and the costs of maintaining online servers and putting back all of the offline features they've taken out over the years. Sure the online-esports-hopefuls will creep over to Tekken (where they really want to be anyway) But the Offline Virtua Fighter Scene would blossom In fact the Offline Scene for Virtua Fighter was much larger and vibrant before the introduction of online features. The online mode has given cover to Sega to remove both single player and offline two player features

The Online Tournament Mode that was added to VF5US would be far more popular as offline VS mode feature

The series has given up a great deal in exchange for online features , and roll-back was it really worth it?