Hey! You mentioned a while ago that the producer (?) of VF5US had chalked up the lack of online tournaments for the game outside Japan to overseas players just being behind the times on online tournaments or something to that effect. Do you have a source on hand for one of the times that's been said? I'd just like to have something I can reference for that belief
Producer Aoki's been a little more pointed on certain streams but the VODs are a pain to locate/search on a whim... here's one printed source, with a fairly neutral "offline tournaments are still the primary format in the west, so they may not be fully accustomed to online tournaments yet" (followed by some bloviating by Tekken producer Harada, who's tagged in on a lot of VFe-related interviews and tends to monopolise the conversations with their own opinions on and/or rationalisations for every issue raised).
I don't know that Aoki (or Harada) are being sincere when they throw out certain comments; I think they're just deflecting because they can't be candid about their netcode and don't want to say anything to draw further attention to that specific problem. That said, I do think Harada's point about western VF players lacking a point of contact or visible support network from Sega is true enough—my impression for years has been that Sega's international branches are willing to entertain external offers to collaborate or cooperate with community initiatives but they don't have the will or the infrastructure to proactively run or promote tournaments for any of their games.
I also know there have been promising developments within the last year or so re: getting genuine insight into western players' habits, requests, etc but there's no knowing what impact they might have until Sega actually decides to announce something...