Coming as a surprise to many, IGN has disclosed that Rockstar’s latest project is a… ping pong game exclusive to the Xbox 360! Yes, like you and me, IGN was surprised at the revelation too, but Rockstar affirms that the game, like its other titles, will be fun to play and will be different than other table-tennis (are there any?) or sports titles out there in the market.

Simply dubbed “Table Tennis” and in development at Rockstar San Diego, the game will be exclusive to Xbox 360, and by the looks of it, will take full advantage of the hardware. The title will retail for $40, which is twenty less than the premium 360 users have to pay.

The site has an interview with Executive Producer and President Sam Houser on the game. Here’s the opening:

IGN: Our jaws are a-drop. Rockstar has become the center for urban cool in videogames over the last five years with games such as GTA, Manhunt, and Midnight Club. Why on Earth would you go and make a game based on table tennis? (And more importantly can you switch the way you hold the racquet from Western to Eastern styles?)

Sam Houser: Mainly because we absolutely love table tennis and wanted to try and make something that could show the audience what could be possible — on a relatively focused level — in the next generation of videogames. Our mission brief at Rockstar has been clear to us from when we founded the company — to make titles with innovative game play about subject matters we were interested in. We have always been a company that likes to take risks, and do things differently from everyone else. For us this does not just mean gangster films, or car chases or westerns (much as we still love them), but anything that we think is interesting and has not been successfully handled elsewhere in a videogame. From our perspective, table tennis fitted the bill perfectly — especially as games with a very strong two-player component are very fun to make — and play! Above all, Table Tennis allows us to showcase what we believe the key characteristics of the high definition era of console gaming will be. These are not just higher resolution graphics, but using higher resolution graphics and hugely advanced animation systems to impart physical and emotional information to the player, so that the control and tactics of the game are more real and more diverse than on current-generation titles. To put it another way — improved animation and higher resolution graphics on their own are not enough — but when they can directly improve the quality of gameplay and experience, then they become very interesting. We were keen to test out these theories on a smaller scale, and Table Tennis felt like the perfect fit. And, yes, you will be able to hold the racquet in both styles.