The World Snooker Championship franchise started with World Championship Snooker on the Playstation and PC back in 2000 and is the official game franchise of the World Snooker Championship. The games have always been developed by Blade Interactive Studios and were initially published by Codemasters untill after the 2004 version of the game when puiblishing moved to Sega Europe.
In 2004 the name of the franchise was changed to World Snooker Championship to better reflect the name of the sports tournament body and the actual snooker tournament held every year at the Crucible in Sheffield, England.
In 2005 the games box art featured the snooker player Paul Hunter who sadly died in 2006, aged just 27, after a battle with cancer. When the game was re-released as a budget title from Sold-out Software, his image and likeness remained on the cover and in the game but with a notice on the back of the box "Paul Hunter 1978 - 2006".
The 2007 version of the game was the first World Snooker game to also feature fully licensed Pool tournaments alongside the snooker ones. Previous versions of the game had pool only as a side game you could play in single matches against the computer or in multiplayer. In the 2007 version of the game you could start a career playing only pool tournaments, cutting out snooker altogether.
In September 2008 the latest game in the franchise is due to be released WSC Real 08: World Snooker Championship. It will see the release of the franchise on the Wii for the first time and will come with a case containing a cue attachment for the Wii-mote. It will also be the first PC version of the title to be released since 2005.
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