EA Sports Developing Tennis Game

One sport that has been missing from EA Sports lineup of games has been tennis. Today EA announced that they are currently working on one. The game will release first on the Wii in 2009 before coming to other consoles. It is being developed out of EA Canada and will be their first game to use the upcoming Wii MotionPlus.

EA SPORTS will bring tennis to life and allow players to experience the pressure and excitement of competing in the greatest theaters in the game, and it will be the only videogame to feature the All England Lawn Tennis Club – home of The Championships, Wimbledon. The all-new EA SPORTS tennis franchise will offer innovative ways to play, both as or against the greatest players from the past or present, letting you control the ball and work the court like you never have before in a tennis videogame.

Facebreaker Audition Videos

EA Sports has released some new videos promoting Facebreaker through character “audition” videos. Molotov, Voodoo, Steve, Socks, Spin, and Brick are featured. As of yet there is no footage of the monkey, which I amuse myself by thinking up the possibilities of combining with Photo Face.

Also some more “celebrity” additions to Facebreaker are now known. Spencer and Heidi of The Hills fame and the members of From First to Last join Kim Kardashian and Peter Moore. Considering the significance of them it’s better to think of these characters as a bonus rather than how EA is building an entire game around so-called celebs with Celebrity Sports Showdown on the Wii.

Continue on to view the videos.

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EA-Take Two Saga Continues

In a press release today it was stated that EA and Take Two discussed the the potential acquisition over the course of the weekend. EA has now accepted Take Two’s offer to provide them with a presentation that includes non-public information. EA will allow their offer for the outstanding shares to expire at at midnight eastern tonight.

Basically what this means is that because EA doesn’t feel it could integrate Take Two in order to take advantage of the holiday season and as such they will reevaluate the offer. From the beginning that was the first goal of the deal for EA. On the other side Take Two is attempting to prove they are actually worth more than what EA is offering. But the two sides are talking which is more than could be said previously.

At this point regardless of what happens the upcoming 2K Sports releases (NBA 2K9, NHL 2K9) should not be affected.

The Line Drive

• A lot of people are curious when the first info on NCAA Basketball 09 will be out. News should be coming in the near future though I don’t know exactly when that might be. There is a community event tentatively scheduled for early September.

• Right now there is nothing to report on Madden 09’s online play being improved especially regarding the disconnect issues so many are experiencing.

• Word on what will be included in the second patch for Madden 09 may come as early as this week.

• Could EA have purchased Euphoria, the tech behind Backbreaker? This report is hardly definitive but it is a possibility.

• IGN has four new gameplay videos showing off NBA Live 09.

• IGN also has the first hands-on preview of NBA 2K9. You can check out a teaser trailer for the game here. There is also the opportunity to take part in Q&A on the game at Operation Sports.

• League Gaming has a look at the online leagues for NHL 2K9. There are a lot of improvements and probably shows what will be coming for NBA 2K9’s leagues as well. This setup definitely puts the “league” attempts by EA to date to shame.

Tiger 09 and NHL 2K9 Demos Available

The Tiger Woods 09 demo is out for both the 360 and PS3. It contains three different holes to play, feedback and custom drills with Hank Haney, and the opportunity to try out the new club tuning feature.

The NHL 2K9 demo can be found for the PS3 and should be following on the 360 as early as next week. It offers a three minute period with the Detroit Red Wings facing the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Does Tiger Woods feel like an advancement from last year? Does NHL 2K9 really come across as having been built from the ground up? Feel free to leave your thoughts on both of the demos in the comments.

The Line Drive

With so much focus going towards the new releases of Madden and Head Coach 09 it was easy to overlook news on other games and even some that were related to Madden. Here I recap items that may be of interest from the last couple days but didn’t make the cut for a full posting.

• Jon Robinson, formerly of Gametap and IGN and now with ESPN, played 24 hours straight of Madden. He recalls the events of the night here. There is no way I would have been able to pull that off.

• Shawn @ 5WG has written his thoughts from Maddenpalooza. The event took place on Monday at the Rose Bowl.

• Das Gamer has a bunch of interviews up including former Madden cover athletes Daunte Culpepper and Ray Lewis as well as EA’s Chris Erb and Ryan Ferwerda

• The Signature Play Calling in NBA Live 09 is detailed at IGN through an interview and video. I was especially fond of the quick play call option which uses the DNA of the team on the floor to select a play for you.

• NBA 09: The Inside has revealed the cover of the game. It features not one cover athlete, but six of them. Click here to view.

• There are a handful of new items for NHL 09. A preview and video of the MMO-style EA Sports Hockey League, and two new videos showing gameplay which can be watched here and here.

• NHL 2K9 has released its first gameplay trailer.

• Blitz the League II will include Frank Caliendo and Jay Mohr. Caliendo will play several parts including a color commentator, which could be interesting considering he is renowned for his John Madden impression.

• The unrevealed EA Sports original IP that Peter Moore has reference over the past several months is probably the Celebrity Sports Showdown for the Wii. It’s one thing to throw in B-List celebrities as extra characters in Facebreaker, but here they’ve gone and built an entire game around them.

Facebreaker Discussion in the Forum

While the demo for Facebreaker offered a unique opportunity to try out the Photo Face feature, ultimately it was only a snippet of what to expect from the full game. While I started to see the strategical nature emerge after multiple play throughs, being limited to 90 seconds of intense gameplay wasn’t the ideal way settle into the full experience.

Todd Batty, who previously headed up the highly acclaimed NBA Street: Homecourt, is the lead designer for Facebreaker. He has expressed a desire to interact directly with the community and has now started posting in the forum. There you can leave any questions, talk strategy, or discuss anything else with him as it relates to Facebreaker!

Head into the forum or to this thread directly to take part in the discussion.

Random Topics for Today

• The latest video for NHL 09 focuses on the new features. Combined with the previous Hockey League trailer you’ve got an impressive overview of what to expect this year.

• IGN has a new video detailing the changes to GamerNet for Tiger Woods 09. The instant challenges should be a nice addition and the simultaneous online play will be especially welcome.

• Gamespot has posted up two new videos from NBA Live 09. They show some pregame footage (though the introductions are skipped), the flipping through some of the DNA screens in the menu and about a minute of gameplay including commentary. Interestingly the tip-off has changed since the community event where it was a low camera angled up instead of an overhead camera as seen now. The first video can be found here and the second here.

• I was surprised to stumble upon the cover for Madden 09 En Espanol which is set to release in mid-September. Bears G Roberto Garza is the cover athlete. *Insert Madden curse reference here*. At least this year the cover isn’t graced by an admitted past steroid user.

Facebreaker Demo Impressions and Videos

With the arrival of the Facebreaker demo comes the first opportunity to try out the fast paced action title that EA is banking on to be a hit. While the game looked to have potential as a throwback to the arcade boxing games of the past there really was no way to judge whether the game would truly until being able to play first hand. Make no mistake about it though this is more a fighting game than a boxing game and is not meant to be a replacement for Fight Night as Round 4 will be out next year.

Continue on for my thoughts on the demo as well as a handful of videos including two as “The Rock” who I created through Photo Face.

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Fun with Facebreaker Photo Face

While the Facebreaker demo gives you the chance to experience the fast-paced fighting in addition to that it provides the ability to try out the Photo Game Face feature. Here is what you need to do after downloading the demo.

• Upload images to your EA Sports World account. You can also take pictures using the Xbox Live Vision camera.

• In the Facebreaker demo go to Create Boxer and select to download front picture. It will pull the front picture from EASW.

• Set the markers to the corresponding places on the face.

• If you have a side picture also download that and set the markers.

• Generate the face (this takes about 20 minutes)

• Then you can mess around with the editing options. For the demo you can only choose a body from the three fighters included. But you can select the hair, costume, and so on. There are a TON of sliders for adjusting the look of the face also.

• Save your creation and then upload it to EA Sports World to show off! When the game releases you’ll be able to download them!

It’ll be real interesting to see what people come up with. Given that some of the different categories that can be uploaded to include robots and aliens it’s fair to expect there will be some very unique entries. Already the most bizarre one seems to be a “fish” creation and the best ones may be of The Joker or Obama.

I ran through a few different creations but with the number of options given to adjust how the face looks there will be people out there who can come up with some great representations…surely better than I did this evening. Continue on to see the first four that I created: Pasta Padre, HHH (really like how this one turned out), Christian Bale, and Mike Holmgren (my personal favorite so far).

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