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2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil announced for Xbox 360, PS3 in April [Update: Not next-gen]
EA announced a new game to accompany this summer's World Cup soccer event: 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil. The game will arrive on April 15 in North America and April 17 in Europe for Xbox 360 and PS3. Pre-order bonuses for the game include special All-Star and Classic XI teams, though no price was given for the game and its four editions. The next entry in EA's World Cup series will uses licenses that span 203 national teams, 7,469 athletes, 19 officially-licensed managers and 21 new stadiums, which will include all 12 stadiums from Brazil in which the global event will take place. EA said that 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil will improve on the excellent FIFA 14 with one hundred new animations and other buzzword-like locomotion features such as Explosive Movement and World Class Control. It will also include an offline tournament mode, Road to the FIFA World Cup, as well as the new online mode Road to Rio de Janeiro, which has players "win their way across a map of Brazil's 12 host cities in licensed and authentic stadiums." EA CFO Blake Jorgensen was pretty clear in including the next FIFA World Cup game in the publisher's list of games upcoming next-gen games during its Q2 2014 earnings call in late October 2013. We've asked EA if 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil will come to PS4 and Xbox One, and will update as we learn more. Update: An EA representative tells Joystiq that the game is "coming exclusively to Xbox 360 and PS3 as a fully featured console game. There will not be a World Cup full console game for the new generation of consoles." To make up for it, the publisher plans to issue "a range of engaging content within FIFA Ultimate Team so that fans on the new generation of consoles can experience the World Cup in fun and unique ways."
Denver Broncos picked to win Super Bowl XLVIII in Madden 25 simulation
EA Sports ran a simulation of the Super Bowl XLVIII match-up this coming Sunday between the Denver Broncos and the Seattle Seahawks using Madden NFL 25 and wound up predicting a Broncos victory with a score of 31-28. The simulation had Denver toppling Seattle in dramatic fashion: Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch brought the team to within two points on a last-second 27-yard touchdown run before the team successfully scored two more on the two-point conversion attempt to take the game to overtime. The sim then showed Seattle stalling out in the first possession of overtime before Broncos kicker Matt Prater booted the game-winning field goal. Broncos quarterback (and noted Papa John's pizza spokesman) Peyton Manning earned the Super Bowl MVP award thanks to his 322-yard, three touchdown performance in the simulation. EA's Super Bowl simulations have a decent track record, as the publisher has successfully named the Super Bowl winners in eight out of the last ten years by using the latest roster files in the current Madden game. If that's not a testament to the work of Madden Ratings Czar Donny Moore, then we're not sure what is. Head past the break to see the list of EA Sports' Super Bowl predictions in recent years and each game's actual outcome.
Get up close and personal with these new EA Sports UFC screens
EA Sports recently added a few names to the EA Sports UFC roster, joined by some in-game shots of fighters from the neck up. The fighters playable in the game and seen in the included gallery are former light heavyweight champ Forrest Griffin, "The Korean Zombie" Chan Sung Jung, Costas Philippou, Minotauro Nogueira, Demetrious Johnson, Rashad Evans and Chael Sonnen. Those fighters join the likes of co-cover athletes Jon "Bones" Jones and Alexander Gustafsson, Georges St-Pierre as well as female fighters Ronda Rousey and Miesha Tate, who were confirmed for the game in September. Certainly, athletes included in the 16-person cover fighter vote that began in November will be in the game as well, such as Chris Weidman, Dominick Cruz, Junior Dos Santos and Urijah Faber. The screens are meant to show the details of each athlete's likeness, but we just can't stop staring at Griffin's puffy cauliflower ears. Don't you want to poke at them? Boy, we sure do. EA Sports UFC will head to Xbox One and PS4 this spring.
FIFA 14's reign continues in this week's statue-like UK charts
The UK charts start 2014 like they ended 2013, and that's not limited to FIFA 14 extending its rule of the holiday roost. For starters, the same games that comprised last week's top ten feature in this week's. Not only that, but the top seven are exactly the same, with nobody moving a single place. In fact, the only movement in the entire top ten is Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition and Just Dance 2014 switching to eighth and ninth respectively. Yes, it is this time of year, and yes, there are no new releases to shake things up. Problem is, it doesn't make for a much to talk about in this post. So to make up for that, here's a gif of a cat going absolutely crazy about a potato. Happy new year, everybody!
UK charts: FIFA 14 on top again, a look back at a momentous year
2013 began with FIFA 13 leading the UK charts, and it ends with FIFA 14 crowned No. 1 for the second week in a row. The smart money is on EA Sports' MVP making it a hat-trick next week; the opening week's charts for each of the last three years has had a FIFA at the top. Rather than focusing on a top ten that's so static you'd think it'd just stuffed its face with Christmas dinner, let's look back through the rear view mirror of statistics at what's been a momentous year of UK charts-ery. We've had two console launches in the space of two weeks, an absolute ton of games, and as ever plenty of Call of FIFA in the charts. 24 different games topped the UK charts in 2013, including one-week wonders like Ni no Kuni, Resident Evil: Revelations, Aliens: Colonial Marines, and Payday 2. The Last of Us spent the most time at the UK's peak, earning six successive weeks as the numero uno in the summer. Pats on the back to FIFA 14 and Call of Duty: Ghosts for each racking five weeks in total, and to four-in-a-row hit Saints Row 4. Talking of successive No. 1s, six games kept top spot for three weeks running or more: BioShock Infinite, Dead Island: Riptide, The Last of Us, Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition, Saints Row 4, and Call of Duty: Ghosts.
Alexander Gustafsson selected as EA Sports UFC co-cover fighter
Swedish fighter Alexander "The Mauler" Gustafsson won EA Sports' cover athlete fan vote for EA Sports UFC. As a result, the number one UFC light heavyweight contender will stand next to current reigning light heavyweight champion Jon "Bones" Jones on the cover of the game, who is also shown in two new screens for the game issued by EA this week. Gustafsson beat Georges St-Pierre in the final round of the voting process, which accumulated over 11 million votes during the entire campaign, according to EA. The cover athlete vote began in early November with 16 fighters, which included heavy favorites like Ronda Rousey and Johny Hendricks. EA Sports UFC will launch in spring 2014 on Xbox One and PS4.
NBA Live 14 review: Bricklayer
For years, EA has toiled away at revitalizing its basketball series. In 2010, this meant retiring the NBA Live brand and replacing it with NBA Elite, which would only get canceled later that same year after a demo introduced us all to The Pose – a glitch that saw a random player locked in a bizarre pose at half-court. Three years later, EA has finally gotten around to putting out another simulation basketball game. NBA Live 14, however, is hardly indicative that those years were spent rejuvenating the flagging series – or even deconstructing the competition's formula for success. I can't rightly say how that time was managed, but the result is clear: NBA Live 14 is a mess.
Score FIFA 14 on PS3 for £25 in PlayStation Europe sale
PlayStation Europe kicks off its yuletide PSN sale with a Christmas cracker: FIFA 14 for £25 (€35/AU$45) on PS3, and £20 (€25/AU$33) on Vita. They're the first of 24 gaming discounts in the wrongly named 12 Deals of Christmas - which doesn't run across the 12 days of Christmas either. Instead, the promotion runs from the start of this month through to Christmas Day, with each discount available across 48 hours. That means you have until tomorrow, December 3 to net the FIFA 14 deals. Messi Christmas, everybody!
EA Sports UFC cover vote hits final round
EA Sports UFC's four-round co-cover athlete vote entered its final round today. The last two contestants left are Georges St-Pierre and Alexander Gustafsson, one of which will join reigning light heavyweight champion Jon "Bones" Jones on the cover of the PS4 and Xbox One game in 2014. The cover vote began earlier this month with 16 fighters, with heavy favorites like Ronda Rousey and Johny Hendricks exiting the fan vote in the first and second rounds, respectively. St-Pierre may be the new favorite to win a spot on the game's cover following his decision to step away from mixed martial arts for an undisclosed time after his successful welterweight championship defense against Hendricks at the UFC 167 event in Las Vegas. Coincidentally, St-Pierre's fans voted him past Hendricks in the second round of the EA Sports UFC cover athlete vote, which ends on December 1.
EA gives FIFA Manager the boot
The recently released FIFA Manager 14 is the last in the series, after founder Gerald Köhler admitted EA and developer Bright Future 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, Football Manager 2013, became the series' best-seller after shifting more than 1 million copies, despite being pirated more than 10 million times.
NBA Live 14 executive producer: 'We've got a lot of work to do'
NBA Live 14 hasn't scored points with all of its fans, but a recent post from Executive Producer Sean O'Brien suggests improvements will be made to the game over the coming months. In response to complaints that the game leaves players to figure out game mechanics through trial-and-error, O'Brien stated that the team is "working on improving the way the game teaches the controls and on-boards new users." In addition to in-game efforts, O'Brien noted an "ongoing series" of livestreams via Twitch. They've already posted "Controller Guide," "Perfecting Your Style" and "Levels of the Dribble" guides on the NBA Live website to help explain mechanics. O'Brien also acknowledged disappointment with NBA Live 14's animations and stated that the team is "committed to making drastic and immediate improvements." These improvements should show up "in the coming weeks and months." On a positive note, the post references a warm reception of the game's LIVE Season features and mentions plans to add more BIG Moments and NBA Rewind games as the basketball season progresses. While O'Brien admits the team has "a lot of work to do," he also points out that NBA Live 14 is "just the first chapter in the NBA LIVE comeback story."
EA: 140 million gameplay minutes logged on PS4 in five days
140 million gameplay minutes were logged on Electronic Arts-published PlayStation 4 games, the publisher revealed via Twitter yesterday. The data is spread across five days of EA's PS4 games being on store shelves. Across the same period of time, the publisher said that over five million online gaming sessions were logged as well. Likewise, EA president Peter Moore recently estimated that one in every three PS4 games sold are EA-branded products. EA's data comes from its five PS4 launch games: Battlefield 4, Need for Speed: Rivals, NBA Live 14, Madden NFL 25 and FIFA 14. Battlefield 4 has suffered a number of issues since its next-gen launch, including game crashes and loss of save files for the game's campaign. Given that the Xbox One launches tomorrow, the number of online games and minutes logged by players will certainly grow.
NCAA sues EA over likeness settlement [Update]
The NCAA has sued Electronic Arts and the Collegiate Licensing Company over its proposed settlement with student athletes from late September, Bloomberg reported. The $40 million settlement was in regards to the use of student athlete likeness, an ongoing legal dispute that stemmed back to May 2009. As a result of the string of lawsuits, EA canceled its college football game that was set to launch in 2014, which started with the NCAA's decision to not renew its licensing contract with the publisher in July. Filed in a Georgia state court on November 4, the lawsuit from the NCAA alleges that EA did not agree to compensate the NCAA for losses related to legal claims from student athletes, and that the publisher did not have liability insurance to do so. EA's proposed $40 million settlement would negate the company's contractual obligations to idemnify the NCAA for any liability and attorney fees related to the lawsuits. We have contacted both EA and the CLC for comment. Update: A Collegiate Licensing Company representative told Joystiq that "CLC is caught in the middle of a dispute between NCAA and EA which should not involve us. CLC has valued relationships with both the NCAA and EA and while we hope they can soon resolve their dispute, we see no reason for CLC to be involved." The NCAA has declined to comment on the story. Update #2: EA has also declined to comment on the story.
Need for Speed can 'learn a lot' from EA Sports
When Andrew Wilson became CEO of Electronic Arts in September, he named Patrick Soderlund as his replacement as head of EA Sports. The company immediately made structural changes in how it handles its EA Labels, shuffling its games under the EA Studios brand. Along with that change, the Need for Speed series became part of EA Sports, a decision that Soderlund thinks will have a positive impact on the racing property. "I think that we can learn a lot from the sports games and what they've done," Soderlund told Polygon. "When you play a sports game, the controller in your hand will dictate how good the game is. It's all about player control and input and how it feels. It's a feeling, right? I think that focus on pure gameplay, is something that can benefit the Need for Speed brand in a very positive way." EA Sports-branded games have shared assets and design philosophies over the years, such as the NHL team at EA Canada adapting FIFA's Player Impact physics engine to bolster collisions between players in NHL 14. Soderlund noted that the change doesn't necessarily indicate a sudden move away from the sandbox-style action seen in Need For Speed Rivals. "It's a way for us to push innovation and push a different creative brain or mindset onto Need for Speed," Soderlund said. Need for Speed Rivals is now a launch game for PS4, and will arrive on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 on November 19, launching with the Xbox One on November 22.
Jon Jones to share EA Sports UFC cover with fan-voted fighter
Falling in line with other sports games, EA Sports UFC will be embroiled in its own cover athlete contest, EA Sports announced. The winner of the four-round cover vote held on UFC's official site, which ends December 1, will share the game's box art with current light heavyweight champion Jon "Bones" Jones. The 16 candidates to share the spotlight with Jones are as follows: Demetrious Johnson, Chris Weidman, Dominick Cruz, Junior Dos Santos, Urijah Faber, Chael Sonnen, Jose Aldo, Michael Bisping, Anthony Pettis, Alex Gustafsson, Ben Henderson, Daniel Cormier, Georges St-Pierre, Ronda Rousey, Johny Hendricks and Miesha Tate. We like Rousey's odds at winning the vote as the women's bantamweight champion and the figurehead for the rising popularity of women's MMA, the representation of which is a core part of EA Sports UFC's feature set. We wouldn't be opposed to seeing a cheeky Chael Sonnen sharing the cover with the man he can't seem to overcome, however. EA Sports UFC will launch in spring 2014 on PS4 and Xbox One.
NBA Live 14 getting its own card-based Ultimate Team mode
EA recently announced that NBA Live 14 will receive an Ultimate Team mode of its own. Similar to the popular, money-making Ultimate Team modes found in other EA Sports series like Madden and FIFA, NBA Live 14 Ultimate Team has players collecting trading cards that constitute items like basketball players, jerseys and arenas by opening card packs. Card packs can be purchased with real money or coins earned by completing matches with your cobbled-together group of current and former basketball stars. The two avenues to compete with your team are online in games versus other players' teams as well as Fantasy Showdowns, or special offline challenges that will continually be added by EA Sports throughout the NBA season. Challenges include pitting your team against last season's stats leaders, the top players from NBA draft classes over the last two decades, real NBA line-ups and more. Fantasy Showdown challenges may also reward players with card packs instead of coins. NBA Live 14 is slated to launch November 19 on Xbox One and PS4.
Tiger Woods 'in negotiations' with another publisher for video game rights
Since pro golfer Tiger Woods' name and likeness are no longer attached to EA's Tiger Woods PGA Tour golf series, he is free to explore deals with another publisher. That is exactly what Woods' agent Mark Steinberg is doing, as he is currently "in negotiations with another company regarding Woods' video game rights," ESPN reported. EA announced earlier this week that it was parting ways with Woods following a report in April that Tiger Woods PGA Tour 15 wasn't happening. The publisher will maintain a licensing partnership with the PGA Tour for future golf games.
New FIFA World Cup game in development for Xbox One and PS4
During yesterday's investor call to discuss EA's second quarter of fiscal 2014 financial results, CEO Andrew Wilson noted that the publisher is working on a new FIFA World Cup expansion game. Additionally, CFO Blake Jorgensen brought up FIFA World Cup again when asked about next-gen games in development, indicating that the game will appear on Xbox One and PS4. It is unknown if the game will also be developed for current generation systems. "In the last two weeks, you've also seen several announcements about our product slate for the remainder of this year and into FY15," Wilson said. "We are refining our focus on our biggest brands and great new IP in development, including The Sims 4, EA Sports UFC, FIFA World Cup and Dragon Age: Inquisition." EA Sports traditionally launches a new World Cup-branded game in line with the global sporting event, which occurs every four years. The last game in the series was 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa, which launched in April 2010. Given that the next World Cup is scheduled to begin in June 2014 in Brazil, a new entry in the sub-series is hardly surprising. The publisher's next-gen efforts will not include Tiger Woods in its future golf games, and Jorgensen also noted that Titanfall will be exclusive to Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PC "for the life of the title" during the call. EA will launch the next-gen version of FIFA 14 along with the new consoles this coming month.
FIFA's digital revenue tops $145 million in first half of fiscal 2014
EA's FIFA series has generated over $145 million in digital net revenue in the first half of fiscal 2014, a period that stretched from April 1, 2013 through September 30, 2013. The news came from EA's Q2 2014 earnings report, and was derived on a non-GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) basis. EA reported that FIFA's digital revenue saw an increase of 25 percent over the first half of fiscal 2013. The publisher reported $70 million in digital revenue from FIFA 13 in the first quarter of 2013. FIFA 14 launched at the end of September and features legendary soccer players in its popular Ultimate Team mode on Microsoft consoles, which accounts for a chunk of its digital revenue sales.
EA and Tiger Woods part ways
EA Sports will no longer produce golf games with Tiger Woods' name attached. The publisher announced today the change was made as part of a "new approach" for the next generation to add more choice and customization. "EA Sports and Tiger Woods have also made a mutual decision to end our partnership, which includes Tiger's named PGA TOUR golf game. We've always been big fans of Tiger and we wish him continued success in all his future endeavors," the company stated today. The company will continue to work with the PGA Tour exclusively as a brand, noting EA's partnership "remains strong." Today's official confirmation follows reports in April that Tiger Woods PGA Tour 15 wasn't happening. Although EA Sports stood by Woods after his scandal and losing streak, it was quite noticeable over the past few years that the company was removing the once pristine athlete from the picture. Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 12: The Masters had a giant yellow flag as its cover athlete.
