Article by: Justin Amirkhani

Despite tennis simulators being as old as gaming itself, the sport has never picked up Madden-level traction in the modern gaming era. While it’s always provided a solid experience, the Top Spin series always lacked the fun factor to make tennis games matter. However, with motion controls dramatically changing the game’s design, Top Spin 4 might be the changing wind the series needs.

Early afternoon this Thursday, 2K Sports held a conference call where producers Michael Kelly and Francois Giuntuni took questions from the gaming press. With a strong focus on the game’s Playstation Move support, Kelly and Giuntuni made the case that Top Spin 4 might be worth a second look for those who would otherwise dismiss it. Though, with their strongest argument being quality use of motion control, 2K Sports will still have some convincing to do.

Here’s a brief on the call’s highlights:

When grilled on the decision to include only Playstation Move support and no Kinect support on the Xbox 360 version, Giuntuni stated that it was a specific design decision. “One key thing with the motion control is that we wanted to keep and preserve the gameplay regardless of what controller you were using. For us in the time we had with the Kinect we were not able to provide the same depth to the gameplay.”

Giuntuni went on to elaborate that focusing on the Playstation Move control scheme allowed them to include very advanced control. Not interested in providing a watered-down version for motion control, the Playstation Move technology was key to properly replicating realistic tennis motions for a complete experience.