More on NaturalMotion’s Backbreaker

In an interview with developmag.com the CEO of NaturalMotion discussed the new football game they're producing which was announced a few weeks ago as Backbreaker. The interview gets into some good detail and specifics on the technology and how they plan to incorporate that into the game. If you're interested in it you should check it out in its entirety here.

Those expecting a full fledged football title will probably end up being disappointed. The development team consists of six (yes only six) employees and the file size suggests it could potentially be a downloadable game.

All of which has a great knock-on effect for the game itself – the file size is currently just 100MB uncompressed, and is already at an advanced playable state.

It sounds like this could end up as an Xbox Live Arcade or PSN download. That actually could be a good thing for the game. More people may be willing to give it a chance that way.

Backbreaker is intended to succeed via its stark difference to Madden, focused on the bigger picture of American football tactics, by providing its own game changer to the games industry playing field: “What we do hope is that there is an experience in American Football that we can capture, different to Madden, which people will enjoy playing.”

And such is why it makes sense to be a digitally distributed game. As was shown with the lackluster sales of All-Pro Football 2K8 the game is going to need to be unique and priced more reasonably to warrant it being purchased as the second or thrid football game in a consumer's library. The convenience of downloading from home could assist in that sense.