Where Are the Tennis Games?

[Tomma]

Quote: Originally Posted by richgrisham

You're leaving out the most important word: Licensing The costs to license any real players, tournaments, and stadiums/courts (like Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, for example) are extraordinarily high. You'd have to spend millions of dollars with all of those entities before you even begin building the game, and that's why we don't see - and never will see - another big-time tennis game again. No one would buy an unlicensed tennis game, and no one can afford the costs for the license when you combine the costs of development to create something new on the new PS4/Xbox One console generation. Heck, the last licensed tennis game was Grand Slam by EA, which had all the licensed big-time tournaments and a small, but powerful, group of real players. It sold terribly, and will never be heard from again. So they're gone, and they're never coming back. Which is a shame, but the sport and the industry have done this to themselves.

That's not necessarily true...for a brief period of time we were "regularly" getting tennis games that had 16-30 licensed pros ( Virtua Tennis 3, 4, 2009, Top Spin 3, 4, Grand Slam Tennis 2 and Smash Court 3 were all released in a 4 year span). Several of those games went 'platinum' and many sold well over 1 million copies. So licensing and sales aren't the issue.

Tennis was never a "yearly edition" sport like NBA/NFL/FIFA but they were being developed fairly timely......i think it's more to do each individual developer-

2k/TopSpin- The development team has closed down.
EA/GST- They took the cheap approach going for style over substance and it failed.....i think that they are now afraid to try again and won't risk it.
Sega/VT- Each game got worse and they couldn't seem to find the bridge between sim and arcade. I expect them to be the first to make a "next gen" tennis game.
Namco/SMT- The least talked about yet steady seller, they seemed to have shifted their focus and sports aren't on the table.

It's quite sad that the King of Sports, EA, has only had 1 ( ONE!!) multi platform tennis game since the SNES days.....and none of Ubi Soft, Activision or RockStar has ever put out a tennis game.

[Tomma]

Quote: Originally Posted by richgrisham

You're leaving out the most important word: Licensing The costs to license any real players, tournaments, and stadiums/courts (like Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, for example) are extraordinarily high. You'd have to spend millions of dollars with all of those entities before you even begin building the game, and that's why we don't see - and never will see - another big-time tennis game again. No one would buy an unlicensed tennis game, and no one can afford the costs for the license when you combine the costs of development to create something new on the new PS4/Xbox One console generation. Heck, the last licensed tennis game was Grand Slam by EA, which had all the licensed big-time tournaments and a small, but powerful, group of real players. It sold terribly, and will never be heard from again. So they're gone, and they're never coming back. Which is a shame, but the sport and the industry have done this to themselves.

That's not necessarily true...for a brief period of time we were "regularly" getting tennis games that had 16-30 licensed pros ( Virtua Tennis 3, 4, 2009, Top Spin 3, 4, Grand Slam Tennis 2 and Smash Court 3 were all released in a 4 year span). Several of those games went 'platinum' and many sold well over 1 million copies. So licensing and sales aren't the issue.

Tennis was never a "yearly edition" sport like NBA/NFL/FIFA but they were being developed fairly timely......i think it's more to do each individual developer-

2k/TopSpin- The development team has closed down.
EA/GST- They took the cheap approach going for style over substance and it failed.....i think that they are now afraid to try again and won't risk it.
Sega/VT- Each game got worse and they couldn't seem to find the bridge between sim and arcade. I expect them to be the first to make a "next gen" tennis game.
Namco/SMT- The least talked about yet steady seller, they seemed to have shifted their focus and sports aren't on the table.

It's quite sad that the King of Sports, EA, has only had 1 ( ONE!!) multi platform tennis game since the SNES days.....and none of Ubi Soft, Activision or RockStar has ever put out a tennis game.

[spoofrice11]

So what are the chances that a new tennis game is made in the next year or two?

[number1thumbs]

Quote: Originally Posted by spoofrice11

So what are the chances that a new tennis game is made in the next year or two?

Don't know, but no release would make more excited than hearing topspin 5 was in production

[JBulls]

Would you guys consider indie pc tennis games or just purely AAA console?

[Ernestdavison]

May be Tennis is a racket sport that can be played individually against a single opponent (singles) or between two teams of two players each .

[sheredia]

liked grand slam tennis 2....didn't think it was bad at all. a next gen version would be nice.

[FD247]

Wish i could fire up a virtua tennis or grand slam on ps4. Virtua tennis was one of my most played games on dreamcast.