It's fair to point out they haven't had tournaments in the west; so Ill concede that.
I think what I'm trying to say is that the series looked like it was becoming more mainstream (relatively speaking) with VF4 and Evo in the west. VF4 sold something like 5 or 600k in America, Evo did really well as well. VF5 came out 2 years after Evo, and only three years after VF4. Since 2005, the series hasn't seen any serious overhauls at all. Except for diehards, the series has sort of left the conscious of the average gamer, who Sega was finally starting to sell to, because Sega's just marginally updating this or that and calling it a day: they're taking a game from 2005 and patching and modding it and throwing in what's tantamount to DLC and leaving it at that. I'm glad they're supporting VF5, but they need to move on. They aren't expanding the market. VF has become niche again, and that's a lost opportunity.