Xbox Gaming in South Africa

With the IPL in full swing over here in South Africa, it's hard to ignore the fact that the Xbox 360 is dearly missing a new cricket game. And with EA dragging their feet on a supposed Cricket '09, it's easy to become despondent.

That of course was before Codemasters stepped up to the wicket and confirmed a new cricket game, Ashes Cricket 2009, which will be gracing the Xbox 360 later this year.

Developed by Transmission Games, Ashes Cricket 2009 will feature a re-worked Brian Lara Cricket 2007 engine to better utilise the Xbox 360's graphics. Game modes will include the new T20 format (including power plays and free hits), ODIs and test matches, which can be played in 18 different stadiums. Commentary - which has always been a sore point in cricket games - receives a boost with the likes of Tony Grieg, Ian Bishop, Shane Warne, Ian Botham, and Jonathan Agnew adding their 2 cents.

Being an Ashes cricket game, both the England and Australian teams will feature fully licensed players. The other 12 prominent test-playing nations will be represented, but with EA holding the major licenses, it's likely we'll end up seeing the homophonic, misspelled name. Hopefully we'll have the ability to easily edit each player's name to the correct spelling as in BLC '07.

On the multiplayer side, we'll see 2-player head to head online play, and 4-player offline, with two batsmen and two bowlers taking alternate overs.

Ashes Cricket 2009 is slated to take the crease sometime in June, although some retailers have it down as the first week of July. Either way, it's great to see another cricket game on the way. Lets hope it will bowl us over.

[via Gamespot.com]