Where Are the Tennis Games?

[StubbyStan]

who should make it

Rockstar...they're already 75% of the way there in GTA V.

[ajs41072]

I've always liked tennis games, and would really enjoy a new one. I'll throw some thoughts out there. Top Spin 4 was ok, but I never liked the ball movement. If you aimed at the sideline, time your shot right, and the ball lands about in an area (we'll say 1 foot) inside the sideline. Time it wrong, it'd land about 1 foot outside the sideline. The problem I had was that it never landed in between the area of 1 foot inside and 1 outside of the the sideline. I'd hope a game made now would have much better ball physics, and would land closer to the lines, which would allow for the use of challenges. I'd also like to see serving be more important in a tennis video game. Except maybe in a tennis game a long time ago called V-Tennis and against the last boss player in that game, I would never get the idea that I better hold serve because I may not be able to break my opponent's serve, or if I broke, I'd have an edge. For one, I think we don't see enough aces as in real tennis or at least some serves that yield a return that's off the frame of the receiver's racket. Which leads to another thing in that more unforced errors would be good. It'd be nice to see the ball hit the net more during a rally. In games like Virtua Tennis, if you could reach a ball, it was going over to the other side 99% of the time. I remember a PS2 game called WTA Tour Tennis, that had about 20 or so WTA players. I'm not in tune of how much that would take now, but a new game could be a game like The Golf Club, where you could create a tennis facility with multiple courts and create characters and have tournaments with matches all going on at once. Even if that's too tough to get everyone playing at the same time, there could be the usual online play with rankings. I really hope a new tennis game comes out soon.

[JBulls]

There will be a couple of updated tennis games for the PC in 2017/18

[AceFan84]

Re: Where Are the Tennis Games?

Tennis Elbow on Steam. Get the Sams MegaMod.

Its the best tennis game ever.

Is this mod good enough to get Tennis Elbow just for it? It sounds great on paper....

[Malcolmpordes]

There will be a couple of updated tennis games for the PC in 2017/18

JBulls, That sounds exciting. Tell us more! What do you know?

I think Full Ace Tennis on the PC is really good.

[russilini]

TENNIS AS WELL AS BOXING ARE GETTING NO LOVE ON NEW SYSTEMS

[the_2000s_kid]

I'm the definition of a casual tennis fan. I only keep up with the Grand Slams and only know the biggest names; that said, I REALLY want Top Spin 5. The Top Spin games were/are really good. I wouldn't get a tennis game unless it had the slams and a decent (30-40?) roster. It would have to be good too though i think that much is obvious. I'll just cross my fingers for Top Spin 5

[AirJordanFan93]

Re: Where Are the Tennis Games?

I was a big Top Spin fan last generation and I would gladly welcome a new addition to that franchise. I did pick up GST 2 last year and its night and day between that and Top Spin 4. Top Spin must of been doing decent numbers to warrant 3 games over the course of the last generation I know it didn't have a regular release cycle but still it did get 3 titles though. Is licensing for Tennis really that high when we had Sega,2K and EA all producing Tennis games with licensed players and events during the last generation.

[Kushmir]

THIS. I would be all over a tennis game right now.

[SCB1990]

If it's going to be a big budget £45-50 game then its going to need Star players and not just a couple like EA McIlroy golf (never played it but going from reviews). Realistically would need 20+ M&F players. I'd want to be able to play at licensed tournaments so all the GS and then the next 10/15 top ATP i.e Indian Wells, Dubai, Madrid etc.

[JBulls]

Re: Where Are the Tennis Games?

JBulls, That sounds exciting. Tell us more! What do you know?

I think Full Ace Tennis on the PC is really good.

Tennis Elbow 4 which has been announced and is tentatively planned for release in 2017, unfortunately I cannot share any information about the second game .

[Malcolmpordes]

Tennis Elbow 4 which has been announced and is tentatively planned for release in 2017, unfortunately I cannot share any information about the second game .

Thanks JBulls. I read about the next Tennis Elbow version. Hopefully Full Ace Tennis will be updated as well. The game has been dormant for a while, but I believe the developer has been working on other projects.

[Focus10]

Re: Where Are the Tennis Games?

It sucks we have no Tennis and Skateboarding games to play

[AnthonyKyne]

Re: Where Are the Tennis Games?

I love The Golf Club and agree that it's a viable model - however, the developer had a HUGE advantage there - they already had a lot of the tools to create golf courses and the mechanics of golf itself because of years of doing outsourcing work for EA's "lesser" versions of Tiger Woods (i.e. porting a version to the Wii so EA's main dev time is dedicated to Xbox 360/PS3 version).

Plus, the TGC dev team self-published, did early access on Steam, and went very wide. And while TGC appears to have been successful, I don't think it's been a massive runaway success in terms of revenue. I sure hope it's been profitable, because I'd love another update or new version in the future.

Anyone starting today with tennis basically has to start from scratch. That's such a huge risk in an unproven market that I don't see anyone doing it.

But I hope I am wrong!

Great article guys.

Just a quick thing on this Rich - we only ever did non-gameplay work for EA on the Tiger Series and we definitely wasn't allowed to use anything that was in those games. So TGC was from scratch. The course designer actually started as a terrain editor for a tank game.

Licensing costs are through the roof at the moment. My belief is that the only way we're going to see any innovation in the sports genre is to be creative with it, like we were with the Greg Norman Course Designer.

We should do a podcast about it

[Splitter77]

Re: Where Are the Tennis Games?

i would buy a tennis game, but it would have to have all the players like full ace tennis has on the pc.

I wouldn't waste my money on a game with 20 pros in it.
I would much rather a game with unlimited fictional players in it.