More Virtua Tennis 4 Details

An Interview with the creative director of the Virtua Tennis series today has revealed a little bit more about how the latest game will use PlayStation Move.

Virtua Tennis 4 seems to be going all-in when it comes to motion control, using it more extensively than any of the Wii’s tennis games. Sega has shifted the entire interface of the game and it will even use the PlayStation Eye specifically.

If a player moves up towards the PlayStation Eye, their character in the game will move up close to the net. When GameSpot asked Mie Kumagai about the space requirements that might have, she confirmed that the game would probably only need one or two meters of clear space.

At the GamesCom 2010 demos in Cologne, Germany in August, Virtua Tennis 4 controlled character movement automatically similar to Wii Sports Tennis. Kumagai didn’t confirm anything different with GameSpot today. “You don’t have to run around like you’re in a real tennis court,” she said. “You can experience something similar to a real match.”

Positioning oneself properly around the court is a big part of the strategy of Tennis, even for a game as arcade-like as Virtua Tennis. This new system might change the whole game at a fundamental level if it doesn’t have the option to play with a normal controller, which Kumagai did not confirm with GameSpot.

The second major change the interview revealed with Virtua Tennis 4 is how it will shift between first person and third person view. Kumagai admitted that an all-first-person game would probably make things feel more realistic with the motion control. However, she also said that one of the main points of Vitua Tennis is seeing the athletes onscreen, so this new game will try to use the best of first person and third person play.

The game still doesn’t come out until 2011, so the possibility for changes to these features as well as a conventional controller option still exists.