CES 2025 is currently underway and numerous companies are in attendance showing off their latest and greatest upcoming technology to the world. Among those with a presence at the event are top GPU and PC tech developers NVIDIA, whose CEO Jensen Huang is currently making a keynote presentation to discuss the company’s newest innovations.
Much to the surprise of all of us in the fighting game community, during this NVIDIA presentation a brief clip featuring new footage of the upcoming Virtua Fighter title was shown. This is the first footage we’ve seen since Sega’s Virtua Fighter Direct that aired shortly after The Game Awards.
The footage shows Akira locked in a mirror match and appears to be running on an NVIDIA RTX 4080 graphics card. This happens to be one of the strongest GPUs currently available for purchase.
According to the on-screen text, what we’re seeing in this clip isn’t actual gameplay footage. It is described as “Pre-development in engine footage. Not actual gameplay.”
One Akira in the fight looks to be wearing a tattered robe, while the other has karate pants on with no shirt. Based on the UI and the description of the footage, it is clear that this is just meant to be a tech demo to showcase what the in-game engine can do.
The two combatants exchange a quick series of attacks, with several of the strikes being parried and not dealing any damage. We also see some very interesting touches here such as the way the fight begins, showing a smooth camera spin and the health bars and user interface seeming loading in instantly as the fighters waste no time attacking each other.
This whole Virtua Fighter reveal began when Huang delved into the origins of NVIDIA. In 1993, the company developed the NV1 graphics accelerator, which made it possible to have a game console inside your PC.
Sega was the first to develop a title using NVIDIA’s new (at the time) programming architecture, and that title was none other than the first Virtua Fighter game.
“Six years later we invented, in 1999, the programmable GPU, and it started 20+ years of incredible advance in this incredible processor called the GPU,” Huang recalled. “It made modern computer graphics possible.
“And now, 30 years later, Sega’s Virtua Fighter is completely cinematic,” Huang concluded before showing the new footage.
Just last month, a leaked image of the new Virtua Fighter game hit the internet and showed a still of the clip we saw today during CES 2025. This confirms that the leaked image, which hadn’t been confirmed as real previously, was indeed legitimate.
You can check out the brief clip of the upcoming Virtua Fighter game below. You will also find the embed to NVIDIA’s keynote conference, which is still live at the time of writing this, here in this story.
A few seconds of SEGA / Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio’s new Virtua Fighter game (described as “in-engine footage” / “not actual gameplay”) from NVIDIA’s CES 2025 press conference.
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— Gematsu (@gematsu) January 7, 2025