By Alice Hill
RealTechNews
This has to be the week for weird, and overly-hyped product annoucements. First Apple’s big yawn hits us with the and some other non-earth shattering announcements after a much touted secret unveling from Mr. Jobs himself. Then TiVo hints at a super secret announcement that turns out to be in TiVo’s software platfiom. Zzzzzzz. But this one had us drop from our seats.
The secret new Xbox 360 game announcement today is: table tennis. And the developer: Rockstar Games. Rockstar games, makers of the notorious series of Grand Theft Auto games where you can kick prostitutes to death and steal cars and shoot people – even to the tune of a lawsuit for a hidden sex scene, is rolling out a game on TABLE TENNIS. Say wha dawg? It seems the guys at Rockstar love a little ping pong and so their next title is taking on the little green table – no hos, pimps or guns to be found.
We Say: Talk about a 360 – Pong has come all the way around.
More than a year ago Rockstar San Diego commenced on a game that would take advantage of the Xbox 360’s graphic power and capture the intensity, speed and excitement of Table Tennis. No doubt, there is a certain level of anticipation on Rockstar’s part about the world’s reaction to this slight change of focus. Yet, in the discussion I had with Donovan and from the intense and edgy tone of Rockstar’s Executive Producer and President Sam Houser, I found nothing but purity. These guys mean business. They love the sport, they love the intensity, and they want to make great games. I really do think they want to surprise people, to shock them a little with their direction, their focus, and to cut against the grain of common perceptions. No doubt, with this new game, Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis, they have done all these things.
IGN: Our jaws are a-drop. Rockstar has become the center for urban cool in videogames over the last five years with games such as GTA, Manhunt, and Midnight Club. Why on Earth would you go and make a game based on table tennis? (And more importantly can you switch the way you hold the racquet from Western to Eastern styles?)
Sam Houser: Mainly because we absolutely love table tennis and wanted to try and make something that could show the audience what could be possible — on a relatively focused level — in the next generation of videogames. Our mission brief at Rockstar has been clear to us from when we founded the company — to make titles with innovative game play about subject matters we were interested in. We have always been a company that likes to take risks, and do things differently from everyone else. For us this does not just mean gangster films, or car chases or westerns (much as we still love them), but anything that we think is interesting and has not been successfully handled elsewhere in a videogame.
From our perspective, table tennis fitted the bill perfectly — especially as games with a very strong two-player component are very fun to make — and play! Above all, Table Tennis allows us to showcase what we believe the key characteristics of the high definition era of console gaming will be. These are not just higher resolution graphics, but using higher resolution graphics and hugely advanced animation systems to impart physical and emotional information to the player, so that the control and tactics of the game are more real and more diverse than on current-generation titles. To put it another way — improved animation and higher resolution graphics on their own are not enough — but when the can directly improve the quality of gameplay and experience, then they become very interesting. We were keen to test out these theories on a smaller scale, and Table Tennis felt like the perfect fit. And, yes, you will be able to hold the racquet in both styles.
Source: IGN
We’ll Say it Again: Pong is back.
you can’t spell huh?
Weird. Haven’t slept in a while, Alice
? That writeup sounded nothing like what I usually read, and you spelled your name wrong!
oh no – I didn’t spell my own name correctly. Byut Zack, which part of the write up sounds different? The part with the gray line along the left is from IGN but the two paragraphs before that are from me.
But you are right about the sleep – I am leaving for a huge trip to Africa and we are working round the clock to get our presentations ready. And yes, I am a horrible speller. And yes, we still have no spell checker in Word Press that works.
Sorry gang!
You know, all you guys huffing about “pong” have never played extreme ping pong…the kind that leaves marks on your body. Yeah, if you are the kind of player that holds the paddle flat and makes kind of mushy motions with your arms, it is kind of boring. But anyone who has ever landed a 50 mph topspin slam on the corner of the table knows that this game could be hot. Lot more exciting that thowing a big ball in a big hoop…
To be honest, I don’t find it surprising at all that Rockstar are releasing a ping-pong game. Lets face it. These guys have been the essence of cool in gaming since the release of GTA. They do it by going against the grain; being slightly alternative. Just cause it ain’t gonna have tits in it doesn’t mean it won’t be alternative, or appeal to the same people as the GTA series.
Being cool is not caring what other people think of as cool.
Table tennis therefore is pretty damn cool.
Then again, the game might suck!
craps table
craps table