Author Archive
  • PadreCast #7: NFL Tour
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    Posted December 30th, 2007 at 7:04 pm 10 Comments »
    After a hiatus the PadreCast returns. They'll become more regular with shows once a week or whenever a topic catches fire within the community. The guest on the show is EA Sports Community Manager Will Kinsler. To shake off the rust, this PadreCast is more on the lighter side of things as we discuss our experiences playing NFL Tour at the recent event in New York as well as our thoughts on some of the teams and players in the game....
  • Utopia EASW Bowl Photo Challenge
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    Posted December 30th, 2007 at 7:03 pm 2 Comments »
    Through January 9th Utopia College Sports is running an EA Sports World photo contest. Simply take a screenshot from one of the Bowl matchups and post it in the contest thread. By doing so you are entered for a chance to win prizes which will be randomly drawn. More than one submission can be made to increase the chance of winning a prize. You can check out the thread with the full details, view other entries, and post your own by visiting here....
  • Sports games showing signs of life on the Wii
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    Posted December 28th, 2007 at 3:08 am 34 Comments »
    The Wii has been a juggernaut since launch. No one would be able to argue otherwise in the area of hardware sales. It has been out over a year and is still very difficult to find in stores. It sold nearly a million units in November and that is with the supply constrained. However outside of a handful of first party titles, sales of games for the Wii have been somewhat disappointing. This is especially the case for third party titles which seem to go largely ignored by the user base. The ...
  • Top NCAA Football 09 cover candidates
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    Posted December 27th, 2007 at 8:58 am 258 Comments »
    With EA already teasing the cover announcement, it is time to look over the top candidates to grace the cover of NCAA Football 09. Historically EA has gone for the most popular and dynamic player entering the draft. The are a couple exceptions though such as when they went retro with Desmond Howard in 06 and chose Jared Zabransky for 08 based less off the success of him as an individual and more on the overall excitement around the Boise State team. The cover also generally goes to an of...
  • The evolution of sports gaming communities
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    Posted December 26th, 2007 at 9:30 am 60 Comments »
    A significant shift has occurred in the way the sports community interacts over the past two plus years. It has gone from a time when fan sites were prominent. Those such as Madden Nation and Madden Mania provided opportunities for people to extend the enjoyment they got out of a particular game. Those two sites, that really drove the community for not only Madden but other sports games, have since become part of larger media sites. With that shift the goals have changed to providing t...
  • Seven NFL Tour producer videos
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    Posted December 25th, 2007 at 7:07 am 8 Comments »
    Gametrailers has posted up seven new producer videos going over aspects of NFL Tour. Some of the things discussed are the overall story and concept behind the game, the controls, single player Tour mode and create-a-player, the game's presentation and graphics, the two mini-games, and the Smash Meter. One thing I would say when looking at the gameplay in the vids is I would recommend bumping up the difficulty level one higher than the default. It forces the action a little more because th...
  • Analyzing the college basketball game sales
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    Posted December 24th, 2007 at 5:25 am 43 Comments »
    Throughout the community I've seen questioning of why the College Hoops and March Madness franchises don't get the same support that other sports titles do. This has been brought up in areas such as budgeting, feature sets, improvements from the previous year, and the differentiation from the NBA games. However by looking over initial sales numbers for these two games it becomes obvious why that is. Below are the numbers from the Xbox 360 versions. College Hoops had nearly a three week he...
  • Update on the Madden 08 PS3 patch
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    Posted December 22nd, 2007 at 6:08 pm 20 Comments »
    I continue to get emails regarding the second patch for Madden 08 and when it will make its way out for the PS3. I figured it would be helpful to post what is known at this point. The patch was sent to Sony at the same time it was sent to Microsoft. Apparently Sony had a long line of patches to pass through certification so that is where the holdup is. Sony's offices are closed all next week which means that the patch won't be cleared and sent out until the first week of January at the...