14 DAY TRIAL // EA Sports has a monopoly on big football franchises, offering the Madden series for all those interested in the American style game and the FIFA franchise for all those interested in the British born form of football.
So, it must be good news to some people that someone else is set to handle a more obscure form of football, that being played in Australia. A developer based in Melbourne, called Big Ant Studios, is set to create an Australian football game, determined to publish it on the Xbox 360, the PlayStation 3 and the Nintendo Wii. AFL currently has a tentative release date of 2010.
Unfortunately, the developer is not offering a lot of details on the project. Apparently, the team will offer co operative multiplayer and competitive online games, but it's not clear what role the two players will get on the field. It seems that AFL will also be offering the possibility of local multiplayer, with four players sharing one screen.
Big Ant Studios does not appear to have any experience in working with sports licenses. It has been associated with the PlayStation Portable version of Hellboy: The Science of Evil and with the PlayStation 2 version of Spyro: The Eternal Night.
Sony was unusually associated with Australian football videogames, as it released a game called AFL Premiership in 2005, 2006 and 2007, with the PlayStation 2 being the chosen platform. It will not publish the upcoming Big Ant title, given the fact that the Xbox 360 and the Nintendo Wii are mentioned as platforms.
Still, the Japanese videogame publisher has an AFL game for the PlayStation Portable, bearing the name Challenge, coming out during the summer of this year. Australian football never became popular worldwide, as soccer and American football did, but the companies releasing games based on it will probably have pretty good sales in Australia.