Today at the Playstation Premier event in Tokyo Bandai Namco provided information information that Tekken 6 on PS3 will be available for online play. The arcade version of the game is due to be released later this year, and the official announcement specifically states that the home version will be available less then one year later. A home version of a fighting game, that allows players to directly compete head to head over the internet with each other, is something the community of console owners has been dying to get their hands on for years.

Virtual Fighter 5 was supposed to be a title available on both PS3 and X-box 360, but became an X-box exclusive because Sony didn't consider specific licensing such as that to be important to their business model. It makes sense, with Tekken 6 coming out to nicely fill the online fighter void, there is really no reason for PS3 to have a second game that is virtually identical. The Tekken franchise has a larger following than Virtual Fighter does, so they made the smart move if they only had the budget to feature one of the two games.

Nintendo will be the company who's market share is actually hit pretty hard by this development. With PS3 and X-360 both having fighting games available online Nintendo owners might start to wonder just how much fun exactly they are missing out on. Smash Brawl was supposedly going to have online play, and would be the greatest game ever made if it did, but that plan got trashed and the title is about to be released with no online play whatsoever. This is one of the biggest disappointments for Nintendo owners, many of whom picked their system based on the belief that online play in Smash Brawl would be the most amazing thing in the history of all video games (it would be).