Steel City Interactive, the studio behind eSports Boxing Club, released an ESBC developer roundtable video discussion on Tuesday, May 31. The conversation is between SCI’s founder and creative director, Ash Habib, global communications director Will Kinsler, and IBF Flyweight Champion Sunny Edwards, led by Todd Grisham, the VP of global acquisitions for the game. SCI notes the game will be made available via early access on Steam, however, a release date remains to be set.
The SCI team states Early Access will focus on gameplay, and SCI will work with the community to fine-tune the gameplay before announcing a full-build release date. Career Mode will not be available in Early Access. Kinsler does mention SCI will reveal different features that the Early Access build will make available.
ESBC Developer Roundtable Details
Habib speaks about the fine-tuning the studio is undertaking. Changes come following the recent community play-through event and in response to the feedback given in the latest videos SCI released. According to Habib, SCI aims for hyper-realism, and the game intends to steer players into a simulation fighting style by rewarding them for fighting the proper way. IBF champion, Edwards, discusses how representative the game is of the sport and mentions the smoothness of the footwork and movements during the video conference.
During the conference call, Grisham presents several challenging questions raised by community over the past several months. According to creative director Habib, SCI listens and fine-tuns as they see fit. Habib mentions SCI is consulting with experts in kinesiology to work with the animation team at SCI to perfect the animations, punches, and movements.
When asked why some of the older videos or previous builds of the game looked better than newer builds, Habib notes the game is in a constantly evolving state. Some changes include tweaks the art team is making to cover athlete Saúl “Canelo” Álvarez’s player model.
eSports Boxing Club is the first simulation boxing video game in over a decade. The game continues its development at Steel City Interactive studio in the United Kingdom. The game has been in development since early 2020, according to Habib.
ESBC quickly won the hearts of the global sports gaming community when it began dropping gameplay videos and screenshots of its realistic boxing game in Spring ’21. The hype peaked with the announcement of Saúl “Canelo” Álvarez as the cover athlete for ESBC.
Per ESBC’s website, SCI plans to release the title on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S/X Consoles, alongside a PC release on Steam.
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