EA Sports Message Board

Reddit noticed this today, as did EA Sports' official forums in December. And now it's confirmed: EA Sports based its Football Ultimate Team card for Pelé, the greatest footballer in history, off a 44-year-old picture of him relaxing in the tub.Read more...

Madden NFL 25 brought back franchise relocation, allowing you to keep a club's name and look in its new city or pick from two or three new nickname and uniform options. And yeah, some of those designs weren't so great. The game's fake Twitter feed would even say so.Read more...

Barely a week after the Super Bowl ended, fans of the Cleveland Browns got official confirmation they were eliminated from next year's playoffs, too. The team's president and general manager resigned following the hiring of a new head coach, a comical sequence that is so bass-ackwards you can't even repeat it in Madden.Read more...

Jon Jones and Alexander Gustafsson circle each other warily in the octagon. Gustafsson leans on his rear foot, his toes spreading subtly under the weight; Jones shuffles forward, his shoulders clenching as he adopts a defensive position. Soon, the fighters trade blows, leaving livid bruises on each others’ bodies and blood stains on the floor.

This agonizing level of visual detail is just one of the many ways that EA Canada aims to make players feel the fight in the team’s first official UFC licensed game, EA Sports UFC. It launches this spring, and it’s coming to PS4.

We went hands-on with an early build of EA Sports UFC running on PS4. What we played showcased the developer’s commitment to creating an authentic MMA fighter. And since the team is comprised of Fight Night series veterans, they’re bringing a vast body of knowledge to EA Sports UFC.

Because EA Sports UFC is built for PS4′s hardware, there’s no legacy code to compromise the visual realism. Each fighter has been scanned in using EA’s proprietary technology, reflecting exact body dimensions, tattoos, and skin tone in painstakingly detailed character models. The team even added real-time reflections of the environment onto the cornea of each fighters’ eyes.

The real-time body deformation on display brings a more lifelike look to the fighters. Here, when a fighter is struck, his flesh ripples convincingly. When two competitors grapple on the ground, their muscles flex and clench against each other.

In terms of play, EA Sports UFC aims to streamline MMA fighting in a way that softens the learning curve and opens up new strategic potential without sacrificing depth. The face buttons on DualShock 4 control each limb of the fighter, much like the Tekken series. Square for left arm, Triangle for right arm, and so forth. This intuitive control scheme bestows players with more than 200 different striking animations, just by pressing a face button and a direction.

Blocking is assigned to R2; pairing R2 with a corresponding face button will cause the fighter to parry a punch or kick, opening up an opportunity for a painful retaliation. Location-based damage also brings new possibilities. Take too much punishment to the leg, for example, and your fighter will develop a limp and have a harder time navigating the octagon. A handy diagram at the top of the screen tracks limb and torso damage.

Grappling is a fundamental factor in almost any MMA match, and here it falls under the jurisdiction of R1 and the right analog stick. EA Sports UFC aims to simplify the ground game too, enabling fighters to swap positions quickly and seamlessly by rotating around their opponents’ bodies using the right stick. The submission minigame is a high-stakes affair, throwing both the defensive and offensive player into a competition of speed and reflexes.

When a player attempts a submission, the defending player works to escape by pushing the right stick in one of the four cardinal directions, while the attacking player tries to match his movements to stop that escape. Simultaneously, the attacking player must match his or her left stick with flashing prompts on screen to advance the submission.

Considering the richness of MMA and the strategies therein, the potential for multiplayer here is tremendous. Fortunately, EA Sports UFC will support both local and online multiplayer, along with single-player career options. Meaning there’s more than enough room for EA Canada to showcase its knowledge of — and dedication to — the sport.

When Cam Newton of the Carolina Panthers plays Madden, he always plays as himself. Using someone else would be "cheating on myself." With the Super Bowl in town, the Museum of the Moving Image opened its exhibit "Madden: 25 Years and Running." A video by ANIMALNewYork shows what happens when NFLers get on the sticks.Read more...

Degenerate gamblers, Madden NFL 25 says you should get your money down on the Broncos. The game predicts two Super Bowl firsts: snow, and overtime—and a 31-28 victory for Denver.Read more...

Seattle's Richard Sherman didn't just swat away San Francisco's shot at a Super Bowl, he also crapped all over the 49ers' Michael Crabtree in a postgame interview straight out of Piper's Pit. Sherman mocked Crabtree's credentials while boasting of his own. So I wondered: Is there any objective proof for his claims?Read more...

It's going to be a long spring and summer for EA Sports, which thanks to cutbacks and cancellations has two titles between now and August, when Madden NFL Whatever Number Comes After 25 releases. That's a World Cup edition for FIFA, and EA Sports UFC. Neither game has a release date yet.Read more...

This weekend NBA Live 14 rolled out a patch, but cautioned it was more of a building-block update, designed mostly to help future patches improve the game more conspicuously. The team also dropped this tutorial video, which is notable because it appears to show a new practice mode.Read more...

We are nearing the 10-year anniversary of the licensing deal that killed MVP Baseball, yet still the game lives on—on PC, even—thanks to "MVP Caribe," a celebration of Latin American baseball that just published its seventh "total conversion" mod.Read more...

The Military Bowl is no one's idea of a major college football bowl game. It's a shitty bowl, in fact, inviting five-loss teams to stage background-noise football two days after Christmas. Despite that, every player from Maryland and Marshall will receive a PlayStation 4 for showing up this year.Read more...

Developer DICE is "not moving onto future projects or expansions until we sort out all the issues with Battlefield 4," an EA representative told IGN.

EA Sports will cancel FIFA Manager, its football management sim for the PC, ending a 13-year run for the series that lately saw it finishing a distant second to Sega's better regarded Football Manager.Read more...

Football is a game of two halves, and so is this post. Snarky FC kicks off.

EA Sports have announced that FIFA Manager 14 will be the last in the series. Which is probably just as well, because those games were rubbish. They’re the equivalent of when footballers launch their own line of cologne. It’s an obligatory brand extension which makes a lot of money for everyone involved, but the only people who should buy it are those who want to douse their lives with the shallow, stench-ridden work of millionaires.

Let me pass this ball along.(more…)

The recently released FIFA Manager 14 is the last in the series, after founder Gerald Köhler admitted EA and developer Bright Lights weren't prepared to take the series forward. In a frank post published on the FIFA Manager blog, Köhler admitted the 12-year series needed too much investment to be worth continuing.

"The football manager genre at this level of sophistication is highly specialized and primarily played in two countries (England and Germany)," Köhler wrote, "In which - on top of everything - one game has practically dominated the market in recent years. The niche market and general trend toward online and mobile games were also contributing factors. Moreover, FM had reached a crossroads at which a new engine and/or corresponding online technology would be the only way to give the series a boost. When all these factors were evaluated, it led us to the decision to blow the final whistle."

While EA supported the FIFA Manager series across a decade, it never made a significant impact against the genre steamroller that is Sega's Football Manager. Last year's entry, FM 2013, became the series' best-seller after shifting more than 1 million copies, despite being pirated more than 10 million times.

Back in the summer, the NCAA piously announced it would no longer license video games, leaving it to members to decide whether they would continue to appear in EA Sports' college football series. The schools' biggest licensing agent and Electronic Arts chose to settle all claims brought by college players, leaving the NCAA as the only defendant. Naturally, the NCAA is now suing EA.Read more...

Heading into this console transition my opinion was that, of all the genres that could possibly sell a new Xbox or PlayStation, sports would come in last. Despite the richer visuals and refined experiences I've seen so far, that opinion still stands.Read more...

Hey, remember that terrible addictive thing that’s consuming my life from FIFA 14? Well, EA are adding it to NBA Live 14, their attempt at taking back the basket-to-ball market from 2K Sports NBA series. This makes perfect sense, but I never saw it coming.

What other games might EA soon add Ultimate Team to?(more…)

Canadians love hockey. It's more than a stereotype; it's a market-exploitable fact. Sony plans to capitalize on our northern pals' love of icy sports with a region-exclusive PlayStation 3 bundle that includes a copy of EA Sports' hockey sim NHL 14.

The package includes an Azurite-blue super slim PS3 console with a 250GB hard drive, along with a matching DualShock 3 controller for an MSRP of $249.99. The package will hit EB Games Canada first, and will ship to other Canadian retailers starting in mid-November.

Eight years ago I convinced myself I needed a new video gaming experience. I'd been dragging a canvas deck chair into the living room, sitting three feet from the screen just so I could make out the receivers from defensive backs in Madden, or tell a curveball from a fastball in MVP Baseball. I finally said enough in December 2005 and went to a Circuit City to bring home the latest in interactive entertainment.Read more...

Every time I bring home a new video game I have this ritual: I take a fish boning knife and slide it under a fold in the shrinkwrap, then twist. Then I try to remove all of the cellophane in one piece, like it's the world's biggest peel-and-eat shrimp. If it's an Xbox 360 game, I slip it down under the obnoxious seal across the edge and lift that out. I have to do all of this because American retail packaging insists on treating every customer like a potential shoplifter. Read more...

Maybe people aren't cooing over it the way they are the NBA 2K14 hype reel released Thursday, but NBA Live 14's gameplay trailer does have its virtues.Read more...

ESPN's E:60 newsmagazine ran an evergreen feature last night on the history of sports video games and, while largely a collection of celebrities' memories, it did feature, at long last, a mea culpa of sorts for Shaq Fu, widely regarded as one of the worst video games of all time.Read more...

When EA Sports shuttered its NCAA Football series about a week ago, it cited ongoing lawsuits brought by current and former college football players. Lawyers for those players say killing off NCAA Football was never a goal of their action, and they're not opposed to the series returning.Read more...

This is the rara avis of outcomes in Madden NFL—the career-ending injury. It is the sports video game equivalent of permadeath, and yes, it'll actually happen in your living room, although I have never seen this myself.Read more...

Yesterday, 2K Sports and EA Sports released looks at NBA 2K14 and Madden NFL 25 on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. At best, both are whelming—maybe not under-, certainly not over- . Madden, however did show a little more.Read more...

There are two football games on the market. The vast majority of people will only buy one of them. So which one should you buy?Read more...

EA has canceled its plans to publish a college football game next year.

Electronic Arts has canceled its college football game, originally set to publish in 2014. EA Sports GM of American Football Cam Weber wrote in an EA blog that the publisher is "evaluating our plan for the future of the franchise."

The news follows the NCAA's decision to not renew its licensing partnership with EA Sports in July, leading the publisher to move forward in a three-year deal with the Collegiate Licensing Company to create college football games without the NCAA names and marks. EA Sports' last published game in the series was NCAA Football 14.

Weber notes that the publisher has "been stuck in the middle of a dispute between the NCAA and student-athletes who seek compensation for playing college football," referencing a string of lawsuits, including that of former Nebraska quarterback Sam Keller that began in May 2009. Weber says that while EA has worked to settle these legal issues, college football conferences such as the SEC, Big Ten and Pac-12 withdrew their support for the upcoming game.

"Our decision does not affect our commitment to NCAA Football 14 and the consumers who love playing the game," Weber adds.

After playing past FIFAs and watching real-world football, we realized that we weren’t quite capturing how emotional it feels to score a goal. In FIFA 14, we want people to really feel that emotion of scoring great goals. In addition to the emotion in the context of a match, great goals are achieved by either (or both) great finishing and fantastic build up play.

The major changes and innovations we’re bringing into gameplay this year enable players to create and feel those exhilarating moments that happen when they’ve assembled plays their own way through midfield.

Finishing is both earned and rewarding in FIFA 14. We’re transforming the tempo of the game and inspiring players to build possession through midfield rather than sprint down the wings during box-to-box matches. Last year it was too easy to fall down into creating the same cheap chances over and over again. Major changes to dribbling — with new features like Protect the Ball, Sprint Dribble Turns, and Variable Dribble Touches — create more of a midfield battle, and make the magical moment of a goal more rewarding.

Protect the Ball is a new mechanic that, by holding L2, will enable you to protect the ball using your body from a defender. This allows you to have more time with the ball, wait for your teammates positioning, and control the tempo of the match by holding more possession or waiting for play to develop.

Sprint Dribble Turns enables you to really turn into every direction at sprint speed while preserving momentum. You’ll have more control at pace, momentum is preserved, and turning to go in any direction while sprinting feels just right. Rather than just sprinting straight towards the goal line for a cross, players will feel like they have the control to take on an opponent one-on-one with speed.

Variable Dribble Touches is the First Touch Control of dribbling, introducing fewer perfect touches and more uncertainty when dribbling at speed. It removes the robotic feeling when sprinting. Variable Dribble Touches introduce attributes-based variety on touches when players are sprinting, adding more player personality into the game — one of the most requested pieces of feedback we get from our fans. The feature also encourages you to really think which player is dribbling.

These innovations inspire players to build play through midfield, but two features — Pure Shot and Real Ball Physics — truly transform shooting in FIFA 14 to make every shot feel real and rewarding when you hit that perfect strike.

With Pure Shot, players now adjust their approach angle when the shot is started, looking for a more suitable angle for hitting the ball. They also understand the phases of shooting and will adjust their stride and pace to hit the ball. New animations support this, making every shot feel real. Pure Shot doesn’t mean that shooting is now more difficult, it means that it’s just right.

Real Ball Physics is all about the pinnacle of when the player connects with the ball, and this, combined with Pure Shot, can create the exhilaration of scoring we’re looking for. We’ve studied a lot of real life ball data and we made a massive overhaul to our ball physics system and formulas. As a result, the ball will travel authentically through the air on new flight paths and trajectories, enabling players to strike the ball with force from distance, drill low rising shots with accuracy, and blast dipping and swerving shots.

We’ve also introduced new step-based locomotion technology. Locomotion governs how players move on the pitch and touches all areas of gameplay. We’re calling this feature Precision Movement because it makes every step count. Players will plant, pivot, cut, and shift momentum realistically with a game-changing effect on play. Player acceleration and deceleration is also more realistic, players feel more grounded, and manage their momentum with distinct foot plants and push-offs. It feels like football.

FIFA 14 is the pinnacle of eight years of development on the PS3. In addition to delivering the emotion of scoring, we also have 13 different game modes, including FIFA Ultimate Team and new Co-op Seasons. Plus, it’ll be easy for players to bring their FIFA 14 experiences from PS3 to PS4. Ultimate Team roster, progress, in-game items, and in-game currency are all accessible from either console, and EA Sports Football Club progress and Career Mode rewards will also travel to the new consoles.

Enjoy the game!