First details of X2 Football 2010 leak out

This should be filed in the big drawer marked 'rumour', but when I was over at developer Exient recently I did a bit of detective work concerning its forthcoming and to-date unannounced football game X2 Football 2010.

Last year's version was pretty successful, with over 1.5 million downloads of the paid and free version, and so Exient has been spending plenty of time and effort making sure the new release will compete with the likes of FIFA and Real Football in a World Cup year.

One area it's been working on is multiplayer, especially in terms of the much hoped for online option, although nothing's confirmed yet.

Reading between the lines, it also seems that the floating virtual D-pad control system has been re-invented. The development team were pretty proud of how they'd innovated the game, but they were also too canny to give away any specifics.

Apart, that is, from the slight slip of the lips revealing that the scope of the teams - which because of licensing reasons were previously limited to international teams - has been extended in some way.

All interesting speculation, but as I wasn't allowed to see the game it's currently something I can't confirm. Hopefully more details will leak out over the coming weeks, prior to a planned late spring release.