EA Sports serves up tennis franchise

While Electronic Arts is known for a robust lineup of sports games spanning the gamut from pro football to rugby, the publisher hasn't dabbled in the world of tennis since the days of the Sega Genesis. That will change next year, as EA today announced at the Leipzig Games Convention that its Vancouver-based EA Canada studio is working on a new tennis franchise for release next year.

The still-unnamed series will debut on the Wii, where it will support Nintendo's Wii MotionPlus attachment in order to improve the motion-sensing hardware's accuracy. Versions of the game for other platforms will trail the Wii edition's launch.

In keeping with EA history, the publisher has also obtained a bit of exclusivity for the game. The EA Sports-branded tennis game will be the only video game to feature the All England Lawn Tennis Club, site of the Wimbledon Championships. The game will also include a selection of past and present tennis greats for players to play as or against.