"First of its kind" online for Shaun White

Ubisoft's first serious crack at extreme sports will boast online play that's "the first of its kind as far as snowboarding games go" - that's according to Shaun White Snowboarding art director Scott Mitchell, who's been bigging up his title to Eurogamer.

Built on the Assassin's Creed engine, Shaun White promises to deliver mountain environments of unprecedented scale, where everywhere you can see, you can ride. But faced with the challenge of usurping genre heavyweights like SSX, Amped and 1080, Ubi reckons online multiplayer is the ace up its thermal sleeve.

"There's never been massive online multiplayer like this in a snowboarding game before," Mitchell told us. When hooked up to an Internet connection, the game world will be permanently populated by real human player, whether you're playing in single- or multiplayer.

"We really wanted to get across the idea of the community as it's really important in snowboarding," he added. "Everybody snowboards with their crew; you'll have a group of friends that you always go out with. It's essentially a large lobby, being able to bring all of your friends where you are, participate in a competition, film one another going down the hill and upload the videos to the website. It's important to have it seamless."

Sadly, we didn't get to see this feature in action during our recent trip to Ubisoft Montreal. We did, however, get to play the game on both 360 and Wii, which you can read all about on Eurogamer today.

Shaun White Snowboarding is due out on 360, PS3, PC and Wii this Christmas.