Virtua Tennis goes back home

The reason why it was taken back to Japan with the original studio was looking at Virtua Tennis 3 and 2009 and listening to fan reaction and user feedback, we felt for 4 there needed to be a lot of major changes in the game.

With that in mind, if you're going to add a lot of new elements, if you're going to change something quite a lot, to some respect you have to scrap what's already there. We felt it was a task best done by the original team who understood the game the most, who understood the main concepts and goals of the game the most, and had the most experience. We could constructively scrap parts where we would need to update and think about what could be changed, what could be updated.

At the end of 2009, we felt almost every element in the game was exhausted. So we needed to bring a lot of new things on board. That's why it was taken back to the original team in Japan.

Obviously it's a very high standard that the series has set. With 09 actually the original team visited Sumo and worked with them closely in terms of sharing animation data and character model assets. Also, we were discussing on various game design aspects. They were involved on a supportive level, but they were involved a little bit more than that as well.

Obviously Sumo is a studio that we trust. But with that way of working, let's say with a different studio making the title, it was not as easy to realise what new things the title needed at that time, which we have realised now and tried to put in the game for number four.

Working with a different studio it showed some of the difficulties in making a new title in an already established series. Like we mentioned before, that was another reason why number four was done in Japan.

There's no Virtua Fighter tech involved in it. It's our brand new original system we've made for number four. The team included members from the Virtua Fighter team who had more online development experience. They worked closely with people who understood how the game should be built. With this set-up, with these members in place, the system has been greatly improved.

Now it's totally synched with the other user on the other side, so you're not going to get a lag spike and the ball appearing in one place one second and then in the next frame somewhere else. You're not going to get that any more. You can tell it's going to be a much better online experience. It's a major thing for people to play other people online.

Another online feature we've implemented is you can set up a lobby and instead of just waiting for someone else to come in to play against you, you can actually play against the AI, so you don't have to stare doing nothing waiting for them. You can set different descriptions as well, such as 'beginners welcome', or 'I'm a bit more advanced', or 'I want to play doubles', so various different people can jump in and out of the room. Communication-wise it's a lot more social now.

We also have a range of pre-set messages you can send to your opponent in-game. For example, 'that was great'. You can fire these pre-set messages back and forth against one another. Not only tech wise has it improved, but there are more social elements to the online play as well.

Well, the question will be answered by another question: do you want it?

There are no plans at the moment. But if people want it then we'll obviously answer wishes.

They should write on forums and elsewhere on the internet that they want it.