I like my iOS sports games the way I like my real-life sports – played with other people. Playing a game about football, basketball, tennis, or any other sport on an iOS device by yourself is a great pity when you know that a few thousand potential opponents are a tap away. And just like strategy games, multiplayer sports games offer a much stronger challenge than single player ones because AI opponents get very predictable very fast.

So, I was glad to hear that Table Tennis Touch (Free), by far the best table tennis game on iOS and one of, if not the best looking sports game on the App Store, will soon be updated to version 2.0. And, as you can guess, the biggest addition in update 2.0 will be a multiplayer mode, the most requested feature according to the developers. According to their blog post, the developers won’t just tack on a multiplayer mode to placate the masses but, rather, will add many other features too. The game will add animated Player Cards, which will humorously depict players’ credentials in multiplayer matches, multiplayer mini games (including one inspired by Street Fighter!), more skins for your bats (the playing, not the flying kind), and more.

The update will be free for everyone who owns the game and should be coming to both iOS and Android around August. Unfortunately, the developers will release a local multiplayer mode first and then release the online multiplayer one a couple of months later. I understand the reasons behind the delay of the online multiplayer mode – Yakuto’s game is all about accuracy and speed, so any lag will be unacceptable – but I just hope it doesn’t take longer than a couple of months because most players will want to play the online rather than the local multiplayer mode. Stay tuned for more information soon.