During the Strikeforce event this evening EA Sports revealed the first trailer for EA MMA. As was announced on Friday the game features Strikeforce as a premier league and several fighters from the promotion are already lined up for the game. EA used the opportunity of the first event in the US featuring Fedor Emelianenko to provide the debut footage of the game as he is one of the headline fighters for EA MMA.

The trailer features all in-game footage with the main event participants Fedor Emelianenko vs Brett Rogers. Continue on to check it out and leave your thoughts in the comments!

Considering the unveiling of EA MMA during the Strikeforce event tomorrow night it comes as little surprise that the Strikeforce organization will be featured as a premier league in the game. In addition to that announcement two new fighters have joined the roster in Brett Rogers and Jake Shields. Those two along with Fedor Emelianenko, Jason Miller, and Muhammed Lawal will be in main events in the nationally televised event on CBS.

With this partnership, the STRIKEFORCE cage and the league’s commentary team of Frank Shamrock and Mauro Ranallo, as well as ring announcer Jimmy Lennon Jr., will be incorporated into the game. Legendary mixed martial arts referee “Big John” McCarthy will preside over the in-ring action and bring his in-depth knowledge of the sport to help deliver a truly authentic MMA experience.

The structure of the game is starting to shape up nicely now that the roster is filling and organization focus has been set. While there is still the uphill battle of appealing to consumers who are primarily UFC fans it looks like EA Sports is doing everything they can to provide a compelling product.

EA Sports has made two announcements relating to Fight Night Round 4. The first is that the price of the game is being dropped to $39.99 while the second relates to the next downloadable content that will be arriving next month.

In addition to including Bernard Hopkins, Sonny Liston and Evander Holyfield as playable boxers, the DLC pack will also include two all-new game modes. The first, Old School Rules brings a new take to the traditional boxing experience, while the second, Ring Rivalries, allows you to re-create some of the greatest match ups in boxing history.

The DLC will go for 800 MS points on the 360 or the equivalent $10 on the PS3. No date has been set for the release other than it coming in December and full details on the new game modes have not yet been made available.

• The first look at EA MMA will come during the November 7th Strikeforce event on CBS. The game will be used to preview each fight before they begin.

• The original first screenshot for EA MMA, which was first found and scanned from Sports Illustrated, can now be found in the screenshot gallery.

• While I generally don’t cover WWE games it is worth noting that the license has run out for THQ and the period to extend it has now been pushed back to the end of the year. Presumably WWE has done this to give THQ more time to make the deal. If it doesn’t happen then one has to wonder if EA Sports will jump on the WWE license.

• A few outlets have given some hands-on thoughts on Madden Arcade. You can check them out at IGN or 1Up.

• Kotaku has posted up a good interview with NCAA Basketball 10 producer Connor Dougan. Mentioned in the article is that the dual-presentation took up around 60% of the development time. That right there probably explains the lack of much else being added to the game this year.

Though there has been some news on EA MMA in the months following the initial announcement of the game that has been limited to fighter reveals.  Details about the game, which is expected to release next summer, are still largely unknown. The first screenshot though has now appeared in Sports Illustrated with the image provided by Middle Easy.

The Photo Game Face feature has been used in previous EA Sports titles such as Tiger Woods. This year it arrives for use in FIFA 10 as your Virtual Pro. Unfortunately it has become an exercise in frustration and finishes up with a poor final representation. There are over 5000 comments on the Game Face page and most have to do with problems being had or the lack of Mac support.

The whole process behind Game Face is extremely tedious. First go to the website and login. The EASportsWorld or EAFootballWorld sites have always loaded extremely slow which just makes things worse. Once you login you may be directed to a page that doesn’t even have a way to start setting up a Game Face. In several instances I ended up having to circle around numerous times until I actually found a page where I could begin the process. Once finally in there are two required software downloads that must be made for the program to run.

Despite claims on the website Game Face does not work with Firefox. Don’t bother wasting your time logging in and starting to set everything up. Eventually there is a point where the screen will just be blank and nothing else can be done and none of the progress will be saved. Game Face right now only works in Internet Explorer.

If you do eventually get a photo uploaded and the face generated then there are a bunch of options for tweaking the properties of the face and adding hair or facial hair. Thankfully there are more hair options now than in the past however for some reason there are still no choices for long hair. It seems odd that created players can not have long hair when even many soccer stars do.

My first completed attempt was made and unfortunately the program didn’t render him any eyeballs so I scrapped that one. The next attempt was tossed when it appeared my guy had a severe skin condition. After investing so much time and experiencing so much frustration just getting to that stage with them I gave up. It was no longer worth it.

The biggest problem people seem to be having is with the character once transferred over to the game. While many have been seemingly satisfied with the face while viewing it on the computer, once in-game it has changed in some manner or appears awkwardly fit on the body.

Many may not even be aware of the feature though I expect that the majority of those who are won’t have the patience to go through this process. Add to that how the final result is not even turning out well and this feature has become a big disappointment.

EA Sports has released the full list of details on what the upcoming patch for NHL 10 will include. The game has faced some scattered criticism over freezes, online performance, Be a GM mode, and the downloadable content boosts but has largely been well received otherwise. The patch is expected to release by November 5th though there is no guarantee as it ultimately is dependent on the certification process. Continue on for the full list and leave your thoughts in the comments.

• Fixed the exploit to slap-shot a 5-hole goal from below the face-off circle.

• Increased speed of passes with Manual passing on.

• Reduced the ability to boardplay players who are far away from you.

• Tuning of trade logic.

• Added the ability for a user to apply boost slots to authentic helmets.

• Fixed the bug that would make a player sometimes exit pass blocking (L1/LT) when they got close to their goalie.

• Fixed the bug that would prevent offline Be a Pro player from getting ice-time in some situations.

• Fixed a crash that could happen on delayed penalty shots.

• Improved logic for how fighting affects teamplay scores in Be a Pro.

• Prevent L1/LT from allowing players to bypass stumble animations.

• Improvements to goalies to reduce 5-hole goals in some contexts.

• Tuned thresholds for injuries from hard shots.

• Added the ability to escape a prefight circle by pressing L2/LB.

• Fixed the bug that made it possible to “shoot” a puck slowly out of the one-handed animation such that nobody could pick it up.

• Improved goalie aggressiveness when poking the puck on cross-crease passes.

• Improved the ability of defensemen are able to do puck pickups behind them to help defend cross-crease passes.

• Reduced the ability to stuff the puck through the goalie by running into him without shooting (most common on wraparounds and reaching puck pickups).

• Reduced accidental interference in front of net.

• Fixed the offline Be a Pro line-change bug where the player is stuck at the bench.

• Prevent slap passes from being deflected at large angles.

• Fixed the bug where the goalie does not react to a shot if he’s banging his stick on the ice to signal the end of a penalty.

• Fixed the bug that makes flip dumps to the middle of the offensive zone go over the glass frequently.

• Fixed the bug that makes CPU center win draws to the the same side all of the time.

• Fixed the bug in the stat tracking of passing.

• Prevent accidental saucer passes after receiving the puck while trying to poke check (because both actions are on R1/RT).

• Tuning to reduce occurrence of tripping penalties when the player being tripped is stationary or moving slowly.

• Tuning to game logic to make it a little easier to stay up on the NHL team during 4-game trial in BAP.

• Many other changes to improve our ability to refine the gameplay tuning with via tuner sets.

The official NPD sales numbers for September were released today providing an opportunity to look for results from the two hockey titles as well as how Madden 10 has been performing and its long-term outlook. NCAA Football 10 saw a more pronounced loss of sales its first month and followed that up by a heavier than usual drop in the second month. After faring relatively well with its first month’s take how did Madden do in September?

As discussed in the August sales article Madden 10 saw a drop of 3% from last year which was marginal considering the circumstances. With the price drops for the 360 and PS3 there would be potential for the sales to be stronger than usual in the coming months. The first opportunity to gauge that presented itself in September.

The sales last September for Madden 09 were 224,000 for the 360 and approximately 141,000 for the PS3. Those numbers represented a drop of 78% from its launch month. The average drop seen for yearly sports titles is right in that 75-80% range. It comes as no surprise that the majority of sports gamers want to pick it up right away as the excitement for the coming seasons is peaking. The longer waiting on the game the less fresh and relevant it becomes.

Madden 10 opened in August with 928,000 on the 360 and 665,000 on the PS3. September brought 289,600 for the 360 and 246,500 for the PS3 placing it in 3rd and 6th respectively. That represents a drop of just 66% which is outstanding for such a highly anticipated yearly title. As the PS3 had an especially good month due to the introduction of the PS3 Slim you can see the affect that was had with its version only dropping only 63% while the 360 still fell only 69%.

For comparisons sake NCAA Football 10 dropped 83% in its second month. This stronger than normal September for Madden shows it is a top consideration when consumers are building up a library with a new console and that the gamer response and reviews for Madden 10 have positively affected its sales. NCAA Football can’t lay claim to those factors.

This is especially encouraging for EA given the state of the economy. That first month sales only were down the 3% from last year but this follow-up month has been much stronger than we’ve seen in previous years.  The low declines show that the game has even more potential over the holiday months and should perform better than last year.

NHL 10 did not place in the top 10, hockey games traditionally have never been strong sellers and would not nearly reach the 200,000+ on one platform needed to chart. However EA had the benefit of all praise it received, great word-of-mouth, and awards that 09 won. As such launch month sales for NHL 10 certainly will have seen an increase as many latched onto the series post-release last year. It will likely make an appearance once the top 20 is posted. (UPDATE) NHL 10 came in 14th for the 360 selling right around 180,000 copies which is a great result. The PS3 did not chart in the top 20 meaning it sold less than 130,000.

NHL 2K10’s sales are believed insignificant and no where near the top 20. It once again raises the question whether the franchise will be shut down in the same manner that 2K Sports ended College Hoops. In that case there was simply not enough potential sales to support two college basketball titles and it appears the same predicament is faced here with hockey. It could also see focus shift and the company develop solely for the Wii.

Overall it was a good month for the video game industry. Console sales were up due to the price drops and Madden 10 was a clear beneficiary of that.

This is the first year that 2K Sports will be offering the NBA 2K franchise on the Nintendo Wii. Originally scheduled to release on 6th alongside the other versions it was delayed until the 19th.  Now though the game has been pushed again, this time back to November 9th. It remains a possibility that the release date moves back from that however all retailers currently have the 11/9 as the expected date. No reasoning behind the delays has been given but there has been some speculation that it has encountered difficulty passing Nintendo’s strict certification process.

Outside of PES and FIFA the team sports have yet to translate very well to the Wii and its integrated motion controls. Previous attempts at converting NBA Live have failed and was abandoned this year which is where 2K stepped in. It’ll be interesting to see if they can take a scaled back version of 2K10 and make it an enjoyable experience on the system.

With FIFA 10 in hand I have gone through and timed different loading areas when running off the disc compared to running off the hard drive on the 360. Installing to the hard drive not only has proven to cut down on load times, in some cases significantly, but it also reduces stress to the system and the noise it produces. For FIFA 10 the actual install process took 10:16 and the game comes in at 6.2 GB. That is the longest timed install but not the largest since the capability to install became available.

Most of the sports titles tested have shown loading time improvements from areas such as the boot up, loading into games, and loading into various modes. However that is not the case with FIFA 10. Outside of the initial boot the actual loading processes are relatively brief, so any improvements there would be marginal. The timing from initial boot to reaching the main menu is longer than average and the install doesn’t help in that regard because the screens and cinematic can not be advanced through.

Install Size- 6.2 GB
Install Time- 10:16

Loading Times
Load to Main Menu- :58 disc vs :56 hard drive (2 seconds)
Load into Exhibition Match- :17 disc vs :11 hard drive (6 seconds)
Load out of Match to Main Menu- :04 disc vs :03 hard drive (1 seconds)
Load into Be a Pro Match- :16 disc vs :12 hard drive (4 seconds)
Load into saved Be a Pro Seasons- :04 disc vs :04 hard drive (0 seconds)

As always it is recommended to install the game to the hard drive if you have the space. With FIFA 10 there is no noticeable improvements made to the already reasonable loading times but the benefit is still there with the 360 running quiet and cool throughout the play sessions.