Welcome to Quick Hitter, where we bring you quick profiles of the people producing and developing today's best sports games.

　　Name: Anthony DeLuca

　　Affiliation: 2K Sports

　　Role: Producer, Top Spin 3

　　Alright, Anthony, if you had to describe Top Spin 3 in two sentences, what would you say?

　　The most realistic tennis simulation ever. There, only took me one sentence.

　　What is your favorite sports game of all time—but you can't say Top Spin 3?

　　Ahh interesting… Ok, I'm going to keep it in-house though. I'm a huge NBA 2K fan. Well, I'm just a huge SportsGamer in general. Sometimes you have an off-year and a game takes a step backwards. (The developers of the NBA 2K series) keep upping the ante every year--not an easy thing to do. As far as realism and gameplay, it has both and it's so much fun to play.

　　There is always a give and take (between gameplay and realism). I think 2K Sports as a whole does a good job of stepping back and viewing all of our projects like that. Whether it's MLB, NHL, Top Spin, Prizefighter—all our sports titles--we always try to keep it consistent with the 2K Sports brand. Yes, they are realistic, but it's a game at the end of the day and it needs to be fun. There's other elements as well, whether it's branding or making sure there's a great soundtrack, etc. We try to see everything as a whole and make sure that every game meets a 2K Sports standard.

　　Ok, assume I have never played a Top Spin game before. What's my learning curve going to look like when I pick up Top Spin 3?

　　Well, we instituted something called the Top Spin School. It's basically a collection of interactive tutorials. This way you don't just get a screen that says "here's the button, now go do it". Basically, you're there against a tennis ball machine that is hitting balls to you. It shows you all of the controls such as how to serve, how to volley, how to hit a slice shot, how to hit a lob shot, how to charge the net. This way, for the new player, they can just jump right into the game without having to read an instruction manual.

　　What was one thing that you feel Top Spin 2 lacked that was a focus during the development of Top Spin 3?

　　Okay, I'll give you two things. The first is a more in-depth online mode. Obviously this is huge on the 360 and the PS3 is starting to come along as well. We really wanted to push players to compete online so we added things like the World Tournament, standard online exhibitions for single and doubles, and even the create-a-player feature. In Top Spin 3 you can take your created player online or take him offline and play the career mode. Either way you're using the same character. This way all of your experience points are credited to the same character.

　　The other thing is that we are always critical of our own titles and the way the game plays. In Top Spin 3 we focused on improving the AI. We wanted to reduce the length of matches and long volleys. We didn't want the AI to be a robot and know what you're going to do even before you do it. Basically, if you are making your opponent run back and forth, chances are he is going to make a mistake. I think this adds to the realism of the game.