#ncaafootball13
Career modes in sports video games do a superb job of helping you create the story of a single team or a player. Where even the best ones fall short is in making you feel part of something larger. Players are forced to hunt through menus for results and standings, and even then, it's hard to tell who is overachieving and who is having a disappointing year. More »
#madden
In a series of revelatory Tweets spotted by Operation Sports yesterday, Hal Chapman Wingo III, better known as "Trey," the host of ESPN's NFL Live studio show, said he would be appearing in Madden NFL 13. More »
#madden
The biggest irony in this Saturday Night Live sketch from last night featuring Eli Manning is the idea of him working this closely with Madden NFL on anything. Widely believed to be too expensive even for EA Sports, if the two-time Super Bowl champion, or his brother, had any intention of making a signature appearance in the game or on its cover, both would have done so long ago. More »
#stickjockey
The NBA Live development team runs a weekly game of basketball at a rec center across the street from EA Sports' studio in Orlando, Fla. When I visited a couple of weeks ago I was invited to join them. Absolutely, I replied, but deep down I was still a little hesitant. More »
#nbalive
By the end of October 2010, everyone knew NBA Elite 11 was doomed. Though officially "delayed" that September, one week before the game was due to release, no one really expected it ever to ship, even internally. The ambitious makeover of the NBA Live franchise simply had too many problems to be published. That last Friday of the month, word spread from EA Sports' operations in California and Canada to Florida. NBA Elite would be canceled outright. More »
The Euro 2012 addition to Fifa 12 shall be DLC rather than a disc-based continental kickabout as has previously been the case. This we already knew. What I didn’t expect was for the DLC to contain a new mode which combines world conquering with foot-to-ball, namely the Expedition Mode. Travel the continent, crushing nations and stealing their best and brightest feet, along with the legs and torsos those feet are attached to. It hardly looks like grand strategy but I quite like the idea of constructing a team by conquering rather than by throwing wodges of cash at cigar smoking agents who, one day soon, will start to raise young boys like puppies on a puppy farm. The video below explains all.
#stickjockey
Though I wish I could say I was smart enough to think up this ruse in advance, I really did forget my backpack somewhere inside EA Sports' Tiburon studio during a recent visit. This became an opportunity to roam all of its upper four floors of development, though not unescorted. More »
#madden
When I chided him for seeding Detroit's all-galaxy receiver Calvin Johnson at No. 6 in the Madden cover contest, Anthony Stevenson didn't back down. "OK, who is it seeded above him that you would replace?" he asked. More »
#kinect
In a title update scheduled to arrive on April 20, gamers with Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13 and a Kinect sensor will be able to face the screen as they execute a golf swing, a more natural way to play video game golf, and a feature whose absence at launch made for some nonplussed reviews and gamer reaction. More »
#ncaafootball13
At EA Sports, developers lug their consoles into conference rooms like you would with a laptop at your job. Larry Richart plugs in his, loads up a build of NCAA Football 13 and picks a game mode. Fittingly, we head to the practice field, the setting where he saw most of his action at quarterback in the 1990s. More »
#mobile
Twenty years seems to be a good enough time to start selling back nostalgia to gamers. We've seen some old-school EA Sports 16-bit designs on T-shirts and other apparel, sold in the stores the label has opened at airports in Charlotte, N.C. and Salt Lake City. Looks like they're interested in putting Madden, NHL and NBA Live sprites on cell phone cases now. More »
#stickjockey
Brent Nielsen has a corner office catching 270 degrees of Florida sunshine, and his face lights up whenever you tell him a good golf story. Especially one that happened inside the game he makes, Tiger Woods PGA Tour. More »
#ssx
Yesterday, the official Facebook page for SSX tossed up that splash image, and the deliberately-worded caption underneath sounds very much like SSX Tricky has a hand in the snowboarding title's upcoming DLC release. More »
#kotakumelodic
Today I wrote about "Augusta," the theme of The Masters Tournament television broadcast since 1980, and its inclusion in Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13's collector's edition. The emotional violin, piano and guitar ballad is instantly recognizable, and you're going to hear a lot of it this weekend as the tournament plays out on CBS. More »
#madden
Nike is the new maker of uniform apparel for the NFL, and yesterday saw the unveiling of the new threads for all 32 teams. And they're ... basically the same as last year's for most teams in this tradition-bound sports institution. More »
#tigerwoodspgatour
It took several seconds for the surprise to register when I started up Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13 on Saturday. The music is so familiar, I expect it on my television when I'm watching golf at this time of year. More »
#review
Last year's sports video game of the year, the Tiger Woods PGA Tour series this year faces what NBA 2K12 did in October—a nearly impossible encore. Tiger Woods at last delivered The Masters, reviving a series that had plateaued and giving longtime golf fans moments and memories that were legitimately emotional. More »
#stickjockey
I've played video games as 7-foot-centers and hulking first basemen, I've probably pitched to or hit against the virtual counterpart of every Hall of Fame ballplayer who has appeared in the last 20 or so years. The idea of playing a sport as someone famous has well lost its novelty in the modern era of video games. More »
#censorship
Sports video games must license everything. League symbols, player likenesses, individual events, even certain stadiums. Then they must provide a soundtrack every year and, yep, those songs must be licensed, too. It is a neverending headache unique to the sports genre. More »
#burningquestion
This is something that always confounded me. In the career mode of Tiger Woods PGA Tour, the fourth major championship is not The PGA Championship, but the "EA Sports Championship." More »
I’m a lapsed football fan, so I’m writing this not knowing a) where Euro 2012 is being held, b) if any of the British teams have made it to the finals, and c) if goalies are paying much attention to the ten-step rule. I have heard of Lionel Messi, though. But even as a missing link in the Mexican wave of foot-o-ball trivia, I knew that there would be an EA Euro 2012 game released this year, just like I knew the sun would be up this morning. What’s surprising is that EA Sports UEFA Euro 2012 (that’s a mad name) will be DLC for Fifa 12 game and not sold in the shops.(more…)
#womensgolf
After two rounds at The Masters, the 44 highest scores and ties, plus anyone within 10 strokes of the leader, make the cut. Since 2006, when the course was lengthened, no American amateur has survived to "Moving Day," the nickname for Saturday's round. Yesterday, I did so. As a woman. More »
#stickjockey
For years, EA Sports' Tiger Woods PGA Tour series has allowed gamers to create female golfers and play with them, even against all-male tournament fields, on any course and in any of the events licensed to appear in the game. Last year, Tiger Woods added The Masters Tournament, the event hosted by Augusta National Golf Club, notorious for its all-male membership. More »
#scoreboard
No, it doesn't have a sports book. But the EA Sports Bar at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas will feature Xbox 360s and PlayStation 3s, six high definition televisions, and an assortment of, duh, EA Sports titles for patrons to play. More »
#madden
There are 32 players representing thirty-one teams—that's right, one franchise has no representative—in the second edition of Madden NFL's fan-voted playoff for the cover of the video game. More »
#stickjockey
When something happens in real life sports, my first instinct is to see if I can replicate it in a video game. It's partly why they exist, after all. But the New Orleans Saints' infamous "bounty" system, which paid premiums to players who delivered devastating hits, would seem to be beyond the means of a game like Madden NFL 12. More »
