On March 20, Sega announced onToaru Majutsu no Virtual-On’sofficial sitethat shipments and digital sales for the game will temporarily come to a halt starting July 27, 2025. Sega kept quiet about why they took this decision besides stating there are “circumstances” behind it. The statement also indicates that this decision won’t affect the upcoming but still not datedPS4 releases of the threeVirtual-Ongames:Virtual On: Cyber Troopers, Cyber Troopers Virtual-On Oratorio Tangram ver 5.66,andCyber Troopers Virtual-On Forces. This decision won’t affect the upcoming release of the PS4 compatible Twin Sticks by Tanita either.
Players who already own the game can still play together online. Players who already bought the game digitally can still download it as well.
Toaru Majutsu no Virtual-Onreleased on PS4 and PlayStation Vita on June 26, 2025, exclusively in Japan. The game is a crossover between theVirtual-Onfranchise, which pretty much inspired every 3D battle arena game ever, and theA Certain Magical Indexfranchise.
A Certain Magical Indexis originally a novel by Kazuma Kamachi and has multiple anime, manga adaptations, and spinoffs such asA Certain Scientific Railgun. Despite the popularity of both franchises, I don’t think the game performed that well in Japan. I think it had to do with the lack of PS4 Twin Sticks, and how fans of one franchise weren’t necessarily interested in the other, and thus didn’t feel any appeal in this crossover.
Back when the firstVirtual-Onreleased on arcade and later got ported to Sega Saturn, Sega released along with it Saturn compatible Twin Sticks to give out fans a similar experience to the arcade version. Personally speaking, I think most longtime fans ofVirtual-Onpretty much don’t feel like playingVirtual-Onwithout those sticks, and Sega knows that. Soon afterToaru Majutsu no Virtual-On,a crowdfunding project to produce PS4 Twin Stick controllers was launched by Tanita in June 2018, but it ended in failure. A few hours before the announcement of theVirtual-Ongames coming to PS4, the crowdfunding was revived by Tanita, and a few hours after the announcement, the crowdfunding reached its goal.
None of the staff or seiyuu participating in anyIndex-related anime gotrecently busted with cocaine either; Taking all of this into consideration, it’ll highly likely Sega will rereleaseToaru Majutsu no Virtual-Onat the same time as Tanita releases the PS4 compatible Twin Sticks, perhaps as a bundle.
Toaru Majutsu no Virtual-Onwas initially a spinoff crossover novel released in May 2016 in Japan, and the novel was then made into a game. Characters and mecha units fromA Certain Magical Virtual-Onalso appeared in theSuper Robot Wars X-Ωmobile game for a limited time event.
