There certainly has been a dearth of tennis games on the consoles of late. While AO Tennis is hot off the presses, there is another title that has racquet enthusiasts excited since its announcement at E3 2017. Tennis World Tour is being developed by Breakpoint Studio and published by Big Ben Interactive. Breakpoint Studio has some pedigree in the tennis genre with some of its staff having worked on Top Spin 4 in 2011. Big Ben Interactive also has a history with the sport having published Center Court Tennis in 1999.
Big Ben has released a developer diary showing off how they are capturing the animations they will be using in the game. It is also an opportunity to see first hand some in-game footage. Although Tennis World Tour is only in alpha stage the visuals are coming together. The video is in French so we don’t know everything that is going on but there is plenty of footage of professional Maxime Teixeira hitting balls in the motion capture suit.
It looks like the game is going to great lengths to have the animations as close to reality as possible. We get to see how Texeira reacts to everything from an out of bounds serve, to a bad call, to smashing his racquet on the court out of frustration. On top of all that of course is the usual array serves, backhands and forehands.
Tennis World Tour has yet to have an announced release date. We do know that it is expected to hit consoles in the spring of 2018. It will be landing on all of this generation’s consoles, the PS4, Switch and Xbox One. You will also be able to get your tennis game going on PC. The game will have a career mode and multiplayer so gamers can test their skills against the best in the community or join a virtual friend with some doubles.
