Previews// SBKX: Superbike World Championship

In the meantime, SBKX is feeling as close as you could possibly get to the sport. Even when you make the perfect lap, Milestone has ensured that you'll get near-parity with real-world record lap times.

“In the Simulation mode, our virtual tracks are less than one tenth of a second away from real laps,” Celetti confirmed. “The Arcade mode is a little more relaxed on that point, because it's much more tailored to a different type of play.”

The 'split, rather than compromise' attitude is in contrast to SBKX's closest competitor, Capcom's MotoGP 09/10 – underlined by the fact that Milestone was the developer for MotoGP 07 and 08. “I think the studio behind MotoGP 09/10 had a different goal to what we did when we worked on 07 and 08,” Celetti opined.

“They tried to find a trade-off and I'm not sure it's worked – they've made a lot of weird choices like locking content out unless a player dedicates so much time to the game... I can understand as it's their first effort with this kind of game, but I think there's a big difference between searching for a trade-off that may be impossible or trying to convey two separate experiences.”

Creating two different engines is challenging enough, but Celetti said the real issues during development surrounded the multi-platform nature of SBKX. Differences in console architecture made it difficult for Milestone to create cross-platform code that simulated the action with the same high-level of results.

Key to this hurdle was in the online gameplay – while past efforts by the developer haven't been stellar, Celetti promises that a complete renewal of the technology has allowed SBKX's multiplayer to be a much better experience. Unfortunately, I didn't get to test any of this out for myself, so I'll have to hold him to that until I can. But 16-player peer-to-peer Championships doesn't sound too bad at all.

While the graphics are unlikely to win the studio any awards, what's underneath this game is very promising. Certainly, the engine and gameplay is much more finely tuned than past motorcycle racing games, and with an exciting season already underway (Leon Haslam is doing us proud so far), this release could be the one that pushes Superbike simulation games out of the background and into the fore.

Before I left the event, I had a chance to ask Celetti what his mathematical formula was all about. “'f(X) = You' is the core of the SBKX experience. Whoever you are, whatever kind of racing you're into, you're going to have fun inside this game. It's not just a marketing line; there really is something for all racers here.”

And with that I ran off to quickly devise my own mathematical formula.

SBKX Superbike World Championship is being released for the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on the 28th May.