Big Ant Studios and Koch Media have announced that Ashes Cricket is currently available for PC, PS4 and Xbox One. The game was hailed by the studio as being one of the most realistic games coming out of Australia. By Jove that’s probably not going to go down well with gamers, but they were bold enough to say it, I guess the Let’s Play videos will be telling enough if that turns out to be true.

Ashes Cricket is the first in the series to feature both male and female players. Big Ant Studio opted for 3D scanned images of the real-life players so that gamers will be able to see some of the actual athletes how they appear in real-life in the actual game.

Big Ant Studios CEO, Ross Symons, mentioned in the press release that it was about capturing the heritage of the sport, which is why they opted for realistic 3D scans and actual motion capture sessions featuring the real players, saying…

“The Ashes is such an iconic competition that we really wanted to do the heritage and emotion of the game justice. We’ve been working hard to make sure that each player that you love – and love to hate – is there on the field in Ashes Cricket,”

Not only did they perform photogrammetry for the players, but they also used high-fidelity facial capture for expressions and reactions from the players on the pitch as they perform various types of actions.

Ashes Cricket includes a full career mode, tournaments, and even multiplayer modes for players to compete in. In fact, Big Ant was proud of the fact that they managed to incorporate ESL features into the game so that it’s e-sports ready.

I have no idea if there’s actually a community that will form around a game like Ashes Cricket. Then again I never thought that Farming Simulator would become mainstream, but thanks to some meme videos it managed to catch the attention of millions of gamers. So who knows? Maybe Ashes Cricket is one good meme video away from mainstream popularity.

You can pick up a copy of Ashes Cricket right now for PS4 or Xbox One for £41.99. The PC version of the game will be on Steam shortly.

If you need a quick overview of the game’s quality, there’s a review posted up by Gadgets 360 that covers the game’s ins and outs in just under four minutes.