NCAA Football 09 website has launched

Yes, its still December, but the website for EA Sports NCAA Football 09 has just gone live. Reachable through BCSPreview.com as well as easports.com the site currently features previews of the upcoming BCS games using the NCAA Football engine.

Following the Bowl season the site will fully transition into NCAA Football 09 mode. It is worth noting that EA has never launched a site for a game this far in advance of its release.

Interestingly it appears that the cover announcement may be coming a lot sooner than expected as they are already teasing it. It is unknown how soon following the end of the season that could be revealed considering some of the top candidates would be underclassmen who would need to declare for the draft. I’ll be previewing the most likely choices for the cover sometime over the next week.

MLB 08: The Show Miguel Tejada screenshots

SCEA has released a set of five new screens from MLB 08: The Show featuring shortstop Miguel Tejada who was recently acquired by the Houston Astros. You can check them out by heading over to the screenshot gallery.

It’ll be interesting to see if this is the start of a series of images spotlighting players on new teams for the coming season. It has been somewhat surprising that The Show has released this many screens along with the feature list so early and in doing so has stolen much of the spotlight away from 2K8. They still even have the cover announcement to come. They’ve done a great job of getting people excited about the game despite there still being nearly three months until it releases.

MLB 2K8 release date

As previously suggested would happen, MLB 2K8 has an initial release date of Tuesday March 4th. This is the same day that MLB 08 The Show is scheduled to release.

However don’t be surprised to see the game bumped up a week as the release date approaches. This is a tactic that has been used by 2K (as well as EA) in the past in order to get a jump on the competition. Where the companies are not allowed to do this with the NBA license they are free to do so with MLB.

FIFA Street 3 cover athletes named

EA has announced that Ronaldinho, Peter Crouch, and Gennaro Gattuso will be on the cover of the upcoming FIFA Street 3. There are also 15 new screenshots showcasing these three players which can be seen in the gallery. The game is scheduled for release on February 19th on the 360, PS3, and DS.

FIFA Street 3 brings these players, and others like them, to life as stylized action heroes in a hyper-real world that merges the game’s biggest stars with environments that pulsate to the music in exotic locations around the world. Ronaldinho, Crouch and Gattuso represent three of the different types of specialist players created in game, where gamers can choose to play with Tricksters, Playmakers, Finishers and Enforcers for different options on the ball and a different gameplay experience. Gamers get the chance to combine these different types of specialist players and associated skills to create the ultimate street football team.

“FIFA Street 3 is about turning football icons into eye-popping characters through the game’s stylized art direction for an over-the-top arcade soccer experience,” said producer Joe Nickolls. “Ronaldinho, Crouch and Gattuso represent three of the different types of players available in our game and we were able to exaggerate their qualities to really create larger-than-life characters.”

GameShow V1.1 Impressions

The EA GameShow December update was released yesterday. For full details of what is included in the 1.1 version of GameShow check out this posting.

The download is found on the GameShow website and only took about one minute on my connection. It then took a couple more for the install but overall it was faster than the original process which took about 10 minutes from start to finish. This download is significantly smaller coming in at 78.5 MB compared to the first one which was 161.5 MB.

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FIFA 08 OTP patch fixes

Along with the Online Team Play update that allowed for up to 10 players on their own systems in a single online game, the FIFA 08 team was able to address some other issues at the same time. EA sent out the following detailing the specifics.

Creating and delivering the OTP Update took a huge amount of work on the part of the dev team who really believed they could release the new feature for FIFA 08 even after the launch of the game. During all this hard work they found some time to optimise some other areas of the game after reading feedback from the community. Enclosed is the list of issues we were able to fix in the launch of the 5v5 Online Team Play update.

-Fixed rare Ps3 loading crash and/or infinite load.
-FC Toronto is now referred to correctly as Toronto FC.
-Fixed rare issue where player would lose control of free roam player and/or control free roam player from jumbotron view during online loading.
-Fixed issue where user would be prompted and forced to download squad files every time they attempted to play an online game if they had changed the arena player.
-Reduced CPU free kick ability slightly in lower difficulties.

NFL Tour hands-on impressions

I was able to get a substantial amount of time in with NFL Tour at the PR event over the weekend. Tour is a game designed for those who have found others such as Madden to be too complicated or just a change of pace from the simulation experience. It strives to be simplistic and easy to play while providing a fun time.

Tour has really turned out to be a fun game head-to-head but it isn’t going to provide a deep or nearly as satisfying experience from playing the CPU. That isn’t a knock on the game but just how all “arcade” style games tend to be. With the reduced price of $39.99 those who would like a pick-up and play type game that isn’t going to require hours of practice and button combo memorization should really enjoy it.

Before playing I had a number of questions about the game and for the most part was able to get closure on them. I have some of the details spread throughout my impressions.

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GameShow December update coming Monday

Thanks to the blog posting on the EA GameShow website we know the full details of the December update. It is set to be released on Monday morning 12/17.

Earlier in the week back I mentioned some of the new features and improvements that were planned along with some of my thoughts on them. Now we have a more extensive list of what will be in the 1.1 version.

I’m excited for the new release and should get a chance to try it out on Tuesday. I’ll post my impressions of the changes soon after that.

6-player VoIP in rooms
3 new power-ups
Streak logic fixed
Streak animations in game room
Poll results screen
Variable question scoring (e.g. questions 10 - 15 count for 2,000 pts per)
Wager screen now shows total number of questions for that round
Mouse wheel support
Intro and exit animations for avatars
Tally animations
Full Screen button moved to Mappings page
Numbering added to leaderboards because idiot designer forgot them
In the shop, power-ups that are assigned but empty are now grayed out
Raffle summary page ordered by expiration date
Must fill out personal info before raffle purchase
360 Controller support
Avatar image added to certain screens
Dynamic game version # on sign-in screen
Added prizing rules to raffle screen
Rotate globe to show more of Canada
Minor changes, tweaks, updates (e.g. pallette icon in shop now animates)

New MLB 2K8 interview

IGN has conducted a new interview with MLB 2K8 producer Ben Brinkman which you can check out here. In a way it feels like an extended follow-up to the post release MLB 2K7 interview which I summed up here when that came out. To note, the screens that are associated with the new interview are of 2K7. None have been released yet for 2K8.

The interview offers up a few details about the direction that the franchise is headed although not too many specifics are discussed over the course of a very substantial seven pages. The main concentration of discussion was on the overall areas of focus for this year based on what needed to be improved coming out of 2K7. Brinkman has really done a good job of instilling confidence in his games and that gives a lot of hope for the future of the franchise.

Hopefully we’ll be hearing more about 2K8 along with screenshots soon. If not this coming week that probably won’t come until after the holidays.

Getting time in with NFL Tour

I have arrived in New York for the NFL Tour event where I’ll have the opportunity to get some hands-on time with the game, discussion with producer Phil Frazier, and a chance to chat with Trey Wingo who does the commentary for the game.

While I’m out here the site will continue to be updated though it may come more in bunches than at different times throughout the day. Look for my initial impressions of the game to come by early Monday morning although I may have something sooner than that.

Continue on to see the full list of questions that I will be looking to find out. Feel free to leave any comments with additional things about the game that you would like me to attempt to get answered.

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