Ubisoft tackles sports genre

Clearly unfazed by EA's dominance of the genre and the toll its financial and marketing might has taken on its pursuers, Ubisoft has revealed that it plans to produce a number of sports games for current and next-generation consoles and PC.

Among them will be a golf game based around current world number one Vijay Singh, with whom the French publisher has signed an exclusive deal, and through the acquisition of assets from Microsoft Game Studios the company also hopes to pursue interests in ice hockey, American football, basketball and baseball.

Ubi has apparently done this because it "extends the company's reach into the full spectrum of game categories, from the tactical first person shooter genre to children's titles, from strategy to stealth action and now sports". Good to hear we've discovered all the genres now, eh?

There are few details on any of the games at the moment. All we're told is that Ubi has acquired the tech, tools and source code shipped in Microsoft's team sports games including NHL Rivals, NFL Fever, NBA Inside Drive and MLB Inside Pitch, following Microsoft's dissolution of its internal sports game development team last August. Understandably as a result Xbox is the only confirmed format as we're promised an "initial concentration" on consoles "including Xbox and next-generation".

In the case of Vijay Singh's golf title, to get back to that, all we're told is that Singh "will headline a title inspired by his powerful and aggressive style" and that the game "will enable players to truly compete and challenge themselves the way Singh has done" as he's overhauled Tiger Woods to become the world's top-ranked golfer. But in terms of points of note, we're more interested to find out what top-ranked golf games developer EA makes of all of this, particularly given that it's now a significant shareholder in Ubisoft.