This is really the core concept behind game development these days. Its not different hardware that makes a game look better - its development time. Only in a few years will we start seeing games that hit hardware limits - rather than development time limits.

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This is slightly BS. The same can be argued for every game - running at 60fps - but it just shows the inexperience of the team re: networking. Firstly, I doubt *any* of the moves execute in a single frame - most would take a few frames (even 6 frames is 1/10th second - which is very fast in human terms - and 100ms, which is slow in ping time terms).

If games like DOA and Smash Brothers end up online, there is no reason that VF5 cannot. Online play may not be perfect (when compared to 2 players on the same machine), but it never is - there is still lots of fun in what can be done. 

In fighting games like VF5 you really need low, low pings in order to play online on equal footing.

It's like playing any FPS on a PC: When I play with my brother in law, who is thousands of miles away on the other side of the world, we normally have to resort to playing coop or together on the same team and not against each other, simply because whoever becomes the server has the inherent advantage everytime.

We're talking about 200-300 ping ranges. Despite both of us having broadband (mine's 6mb), there is always too much lag. What happens then is:

Client side:  sees people doing amazing things, like fly over you, teleporting from one location to the next, and killing you with invisible bullets.

Server side: sees a sitting duck.

In racing games the ability to play online was, literally, the network developer's version of the holy grail. Numerous games have tried it, but they most often fail (miserably; ever tried EA's Formula 1 1999-2002? Cars that mysteriously appear and disappear made online gameplay impossible) although more recently games such as rFactor have cranked out some solid network code that allows both my brother-in-law and myself to get our game on, despite relatively high latencies.

I can understand why online is not included for the aforementioned reason. In games like VF5 you need to have near-nil latencies in order to compete fairly. You can still have fun playing, but it won't be fair, and I'd gather that most people will eventually just give up online playing anyhow when faced with the limitation that no matter how good they are, they will still get their @$$es handed to them.

It's not surprising that there isn't online, this game cannot be played online cause internet connections are just not fast enough, I'm just glad this will shut up the 360 people who insisted when VF5 comes out on 360 it will have online...

For the shots showed it looks worse on X360 .They have still time to refine it but for the moment being it looks worse .

Good further explanation.  Halo 2 still suffers from this host issue today.  RR7 and Motorstorm seemed to be lag free, though.  I agree with shams that the multiplayer should be included.  It would also be nice for Microsoft to provide serversor the solution Sony is using ot speed up online games.

Give this article a read if youre wondering the reasons behind the lack of online play for VF or fighting games in general. Don;t expect to see Tekken 6 online too... Why Virtua Fighter 5 shouldn't (and doesn't) have online multiplayer http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2007/2/28/7200 I take it as an ego of the developers and making it an excuse to include it. I dont really understand why bother with a X360 version when PS3 version sold poorly in both Japan and NA.

I was wondering this. 

When I play counter-strike, there are people that achive 8~20 ms ping in public servers which is equivilant to 1/60 ~ 2/60 sec delay I assume?  (1/60 sec = 16.666 ms)  honestly thats not too bad at all if it was the *true* imput delay.  On PSP Tekken DR I feel about a 2/60~3/60 second delay on wireless versus mode and its still somewhat playable (of corse not as good as offline but still)

Obviously I know nothing about networking with my shallow guess but wouldnt under 20ms be a good enough compromise???

There is always the distance problem. This is why games like Warcraft III have dedicated regions for different geographical locations - to minimize latencies.

Until the entire Internet infrastructure changes, this problem will not go away anytime soon. The way bandwidth is distributed around the globe, coupled with the vast distances the packets have to travel, you will always encounter lag to some degree.

I have a buddy that lives about one km from me, and when we both play online, say, UT2004, we get somewhere around 40-60ms pings, which is "good enough". We both use the same ISP, so no wonder.

With my brother in law, we are lucky if we can get pings down to sub-300ms levels. When we actually get under 200ms, it's mutually deemed "good enough" to play vs. But this geographical location issue may well persist even if we get fiber optic and 100mb connections, simply due to the vast distances involved.

The other issue is the maxim that your connection is as fast as the slowest link. You may have 6mb broadband, but if you are trying to connect to someone who sports a 512kb connection, well... 

Sub-20ms pings between, say, North America and Asia would be a godsend, but I don't see that happening anytime soon.

Thanks for the reply.  I uderstand the whole distance = lag concept so I was talking about an " if " situation where the 2 players and server are in close geographical location, say, within the same city / state. 

  Again excuse my example but I live in west coast Canada = close to Seattle or Vancouver and I connect to a CS server in California and achieve about 35-45 ping on average.  Some people in this server are getting the 8-20 ms level which I assume they live relatively close to the server location i.e within the state of California.  When 2 of these 8-20 ms people fight each other would that truely be only a 1/60~2/60 sec delay? 

Side question:  Does DOA4 have dedicated servers around the globe?  player1 - server - player2

or do players connect directly?  host player1 (0 ms) - player2

 Quoted for truth. I remember hearing this before it game out for the PS3