Totally reasonable and fair, although not quite what I’ve heard, but it still opens the question of why not communicate this.
The only release date/period that they’ve publicly told us is now here……and at this point they either know that’s it’s no where near ready (so a delay announcement should be easy) OR they are still trying to fit the date (which means it should be nearly finished and have enough to start showing off). They are doing neither.
The longer they wait, the more likely they are to seeing Top Spin steal their lunch money. It would be to Nacon’s sole benefit to try to get as far ahead as they can. At this point in dev they surely could at least talk about the title…get some buzz going, create some marketing and engage the audience. Without out, and given their track record, it will certainly be DOA.
So you mean maybe the development is not going that bad? I think we are all very curious about licenses (if we are getting just atp 250/500 or grand slams/m1000 too). They said there would be more than 100 tournaments licensed so i guess we will have grand slams and m1000. Regarding players licenses, I assume they had to negotiate individually and Djokovic said once that he was not going to be part of any tennis videogame, so lets see. In my opinion top 10 players should be at least there and having the chance to create them is not enough for me.
I don’t expect much from Nacon. The Tennis World Tour and AO Tennis were both rubbish, they had nothing to do with tennis. Poor graphics, poor gameplay, unrealistic phisics and zero licenses…They didn’t even come close to the reality. Unfortunately, Top Spin will not be continued. There is no official information that there will be a new episode.
I find you a bit harsh, Ao Tennis (first and second) despite not having official licences except for The AO, were still playable games. There are a lot of points to improve, such as the movement of players, the visuals, the presence of official brands, the real looks etc. But yeah we clearly except a masterclass at this point, Top Spin 4 can’t be the last great tennis game we’ve had.
I dunno, licenses is one of the things that those games have done right.
Between the two of them they had 2 of the 4 Majors, over 60 professional players, 1 Masters 1000 event, 2 500 events, the Next Gen Finals, ATP Cup…….that’s a far cry from “zero”.
Those are different. Each of those sports organizations serves as an Umbrella. Players, venues and teams are already included. Tennis (like Golf, Boxing, etc) is not. Each player, each stadium, each brand has to be Individually licensed.
Now you said that both AO Tennis 2 and Tennis World Tour 2 had “zero” licenses….which is far from true. I explained already but between the two they had:
60 unique licensed players
2 Grand Slams
1 Masters Event
Next Gen Finals
2 500 Events
ATP Cup
Tiebreak Tens
To conclude, Top Spin is coming and is not just a rumor. There is a rather big roll out planned and 2K plans to really hype up its comeback. It is set for Q2/Q3 2024. GTA 6 has been known and leaked for years but only JUST got an “official announcement” yesterday.
Not to extend Nacon any benefit of doubt but I do wonder how much the current state of the ATP/WTA behind the scenes drama has affected the marketing and reveal time of this game.
