Hello all! My name is Aaron Orsak, and I’m the US Producer of Hustle Kings coming this winter exclusively to PSN and the PLAYSTATION 3. As my esteemed colleague at SCEE illustrates, Hustle Kings is without a doubt the most realistic and, frankly, impressive billiards game I’ve ever played. As an avid pool player myself, from 8-ball leagues to smoky snooker halls in the UK, I’ve just gotten used to billiard video games always “missing something”…that “something” is hard to quantify.
But I can honestly say that Hustle Kings gets it completely right! I wasn’t yet assigned to the project when a couple of my colleagues and I got our hands on it here around the office. I was initially quite skeptical given my history of video billiard disappointments, thinking it was going to be just another pool game, but after hitting a few shots I was sold. The amount of ball control is simply astounding, giving the player any and every shot option in the book…from masse shots to subtle swerves and tricky English, you can do anything to the cue ball in Hustle Kings that you can do around a real table. So the realism was there, but how would the game fare for a more casual gamer? Turns out everyone around the office, from the hardcore to the weekend warrior, to people I’ve rarely seen play games, found something to absolutely love about Hustle Kings.
I’ll save elaboration on all the game modes and technical ins and outs now. I can assure you there’s A TON of stuff in Hustle Kings that we’ll be announcing in the next few months. In the meantime, please visit our game details page, and check out the what the PlayStation.Blog.Europe has to say about it. And continue checking back here on the PlayStation Blog for the latest updates on Hustle Kings.
PSN is cool downloadable games and all but it’s still taking jobs from people What are all the guys down at Gamestop going to sell? And we need A PSN greatest hits Blue ray CD. At lest one a year I don’t know why sony doesn’t try it and at lest see how well it sells. :)
Your complaints are invalid Tails. Did I mention you’re a moron for wanting your games to keep running while you access the XMB? There are some people that need to be banned from posting comments and you’re one of them. I mean how stupid can a person really be? Answer: Your comment.
“Blue ray CD”?
Gamestop jobs?
*facepalm*
All developers should take note on the features for this game
# Video Chat – Using your friend list, have fun playing against friends online while chatting with them in-game via video chat.
# Local Versus Modes – Supports up to 16 players locally . Players can either battle against the computer or test their skills against a friend.
# Personalized Experience with Your Music – Players can access the XMB during gameplay to customize the background music played during games. YouTube Uploading – Record your game, share your strategy, or just show off your best shots with the rest of the world using Hustle Kings™ YouTube upload functionality.
# Interact With Your Friends – Support for in-game text, voice and video chat, cross-game invites, and game launching in PlayStation Home!
# Online Rankings and Trophy Support – Leaderboards, Stats, and Trophies will motivate players to aspire to both single player and multiplayer high scores!
wow look at those wonderful features more games should have :D
Can’t wait for the game.
I really loved pool in Home, but this looks incredible.
Damn, those graphics look crisp. I will keep my eye on this.
Thanks for the reply Jeff!
Wow this is awesome. Now I don’t have to fight for a table in Home. Looks so good. Hope they have lots of DLC.
@44 I meant to say in-game xmb MUSIC lol. Glad you pointed that out.
Woo hooo
can we look forward to 24-bit audio via DTS and/or LPCM? Are you shooting for 30fps 1080p, or going 720p like Zen Pinball? Any plans for local team play, however limited? Voice chat for online play?
Zen Pinball looked really great for 720p (probably thanks to good use of anti-aliasing and really high quality models and textures), but I wished it had better quality audio that had more presence. Hopefully this game takes it up a notch from that already excellent experience :)
As soon I as I saw the E3 trailer of this game, it was an instant must-have. I am looking forward to this game. I’m a fan of billiards and really enjoy playing it. Hustle Kings is going to be awesome.
Hmmm this game is packed with some brilliant features hopefully the price is right for a PSN game.
It looks awesome to play with people. But will gamers be able to launch it from PS Home and play with more players online?
I can’t wait for this game to be released. I remember playing a couple of billiards video games but none of them seem to have as many qualities as this one.
By the way, why is it that some have to complain about games that are delayed or coming soon? The longer it takes for a game to get here the more time that’s spent on making that game a piece of perfection rather thn a piece of crap.
Looks great. I’m really looking forward to a great pool game on PSN!
Oh man does that game look good. I’ll be getting that. Can’t wait for the release date.
Day one, with my friend. That XBLA pool sucked.
You know, a game like this could turn out being exrtremely fun with the motion controller shown at Sony’s conference!
This looks like the best pool game since virtual pool 3 back in the day. You could do masse shots and all kinds of trick shots in that.
Now on a side note…
Come on people it is in game XMB if it pauses the game or not some developers choose when programming that if the PS button is pressed it will pause the game for you. That’s why some games do and some don’t.
Video playback pausing well some people liked it and some didn’t but who cares not like you can really watch it with the XMB up.
If it really hibernated it would have to dump everything from the RAM to the hard drive to preserve what was in RAM that’s what PCs do when they hibernate. It does switch the priority on some stuff to make it run smoothly while in the XMB but still there are games that run while the XMB is up so it’s not making anything “hibernate”. If I remember correctly Burnout keeps going when you hit the PS button and that game is very graphically intense and heavy on the systems RAM but press the PS button and you keep rolling in the background til you stop and can see everyone else play still and try to ram you cause you look AFK.
Young fools.
Bring back real in game xmb. Otherwise, dont call it in … xmb.
Can we have more singstar updates here on the blog?
Is this game only pool?
If so not many people would buy it because there’s A LOT MORE better Sony Exclusives to be coming out like Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack In Time, DC Universe Online, Assassin’s Creed 2 and many more, I know AC 2 and DCUO aren’t exclusives but worth buying : )