The UEFA EURO 2008 soundtrack!

Here are the full list of songs that is in the game:

boys noize- dont believe the hype
carolina liar- im not over
crystal castles- air war
datarock- i used to dance with my daddy
ejectorseat – attack attack attack
infected mushroom – becoming insane
junkie xl feat. electrocute – mad pursuit
karoshi bros – love the world
look see proof – casualty-
magic numbers – take a chance
mendetz – the boola shines in a pink neon room
mexicolas – come clean
operator please – get what you want
pete and the pirates – come on feet
the features – i will wander
the magnificents – get it boy
the pigeon detectives – im not sorry
the young punx – your music is killing me
yelle – a cause de garcons (riot in Belgium remix)

I write this post here because I know its a little bit difficult to find it as EA hasnt officially announced it anywhere.

The new UEFA EURO 2008 game upload page!!

If you have some UEFA EURO 2008 videos that you have uploaded and dont know where they are, check out this page: http://www.eafootballworld.com/en_GB/

Enjoy:)

NEW FACEBREAKER VIDEO!

Check it out here: http://lusoplay.sapo.pt/lptv/index.php?page=video&id=464

Please take this survey!

This survey will be a good help for the FIFA team at EA SPORTS for upcoming titles as FIFA 09, FIFA 10, FIFA 11 etc. This is a official survey!

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=sQU56_2f293c_2f9T79NcIxIVA_3d_3d

Euro blog: Battle of the Nations

Now it’s time to explain the role of those points shown at the end of the match. At full time you’ll notice there’s a screen that shows how many points your performance in the match you just played was worth. I read on the EA forum that the thought was these are points you earn and get to spend in an in-game shop, but that’s not what they are for.

These points are for the product’s unique competition, Battle of the Nations.

In the full product there’s a video that explains this, but we couldn’t include that in the demo because with the inclusion of English commentary, we would have exceeded the total download size we were allotted. So for now I’ll play the part of the video and explain.

Battle of the Nations is a daily competition which will show us which country has the best football gamers in Europe. It should be a lot of fun to see how this takes off once the game launches and which countries end up battling for the championship.

All you need to play is to have your console connected to the EA Servers; you don’t have to play online games if you don’t want to. A lot of people find the online games to be very intimidating so this is designed to allow everyone to take part by playing against the CPU so long as they are connected online.

Each match generates a score, this is true for 11 vs 11 matches and also Be a Pro matches. The biggest scores come from winning matches on a high skill level, especially if you use a weaker team against a stronger team. Once your match finishes, that score is uploaded and represents yourself and your country. You choose your country at the start of the game and you can’t change it once you’ve logged onto the servers for the first time. That’s to prevent people changing country on a whim and perhaps using it in a destructive way to lower other country’s scores. You are free to play matches as any country you like so you can choose your challenge, but the points you earn always count towards your specific country.

This score you generate joins all the other scores from around the world and we work out which country has the best average score. So a country with only 100 gamers is able to compete against one with thousands. There are also leaderboards that show the countries and the gamers, so the score represents yourself as well. The day’s competition starts and stops at midnight (CET). At this time the day’s finishing positions are converted into points towards the overall leaderboards. The top ten countries are awarded points and the top 250 gamers also. Then the next day’s competition starts with clean daily leaderboards.

There are five different leaderboards each day to represent these game types. Kick Off (Team), Kick Off (Be a Pro), UEFA Euro 2008, Captain Your Country, and the Euro Online Knockout Cup.

For Euro & CYC you need to complete the whole game mode to register your score, and you can only do so once. Cue much manual saving and reloading for the perfectionists. But all the time you spend obsessing over the perfect score means you have less time to try and do well in the other categories, so it’s a payoff of how to best use your time. Plus there’s always a minimum number of games that a gamer and a country have to play for their leaderboard entry to be valid, so you can’t obsess too much about perfection or you’ll never play the required number of games.

With the Euro Online Knockout Cup this Battle of the Nations idea means that we should see far less “Barcelona” syndrome. Simply because you score less points for winning matches with the best teams. So you may find it is easier to win the cup with France but that only scores you 200 points. If you just win one match with Andorra you score more, so hopefully the best gamers will not be the ones choosing the best teams and we should see online being more competitive as a result.

If you are one of the top 250 gamers in any of the five daily leaderboards you’ll also receive a trophy the following day. Your trophy will populate your My Trophies screen and you can show off to your friends.

Come June 30th, the day after the actual Euro final, the battle officially ends and we’ll see which nation wins and which gamer wins. The daily leaderboards and trophies will still continue after June 30th but the overall leaderboards will not update any longer; the champions will have been crowned.

So who is going to take up the challenge and show that they want to represent their country against all the other nations?

It doesn’t matter if your nation didn’t qualify for Euro 2008, any of the 53 UEFA nations are able to compete and any one of them could prove to be the champion nation of the virtual UEFA Euro 2008.

Euro Community Day in Köln

It is Euro community day in Köln, and I will give info from it as soon as I get it. Stay tuned:)

No NBA Live for PC!

No new NBA Live game will be available for the PC. As I wrote in an article before, no Madden for the PC either. Tiger Woods PGA Tour and FIFA will be available as always for the PC after what I have heard. I’m not sure about the NHL game.
This is too bad for the people who play these games on the computer.

No Madden 09 for PC!

When the Madden 09 20th Anniversary Collectors Edition press release mentioned all platforms known to man except for the PC people took notice. Now Peter Moore has confirmed that there will be no PC version of Madden 09 in his latest blog entry.

We knew that our decision to not develop this year’s Madden for the PC would be an unpopular decision in some circles.  But I’ll reiterate what I said a couple of weeks ago in this space…the PC presents some very serious business challenges to us in the sports category, particularly because so many of you all are playing your favorite sports games on the PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii.  We are committed to shipping a limited number of our games on the PC this year, but we’ve also had to cut a few of our games from the platform.  We do have ideas for how to revitalize the PC for sports games and the types of games that are best suited to the platform, and we’ll continue to explore those.

One legitimate complaint regarding this decision is that when an exclusive license holder chooses not to develop for a particular platform there are no licensed alternatives. While anyone is free to make football PC games none can use the NFL. This is the case also with the MLB as 2K Sports does not make a PC title. It is my understanding that there are clauses in the contracts that require them to be released on all major platforms however the PC is no longer considered to be one.

It is understandable that the very low sales numbers have not justified producing PC titles for years now and it has actually been surprising that EA Sports has continued to produce PC versions of many of their games. Hopefully though EA goes at the PC market in a different way with new titles that cater to that small hardcore group. What may happen is you’ll see an NFL game down the line but using a different model such as what EA is doing with Battlefield Heroes.  That game will be free to download and play and will be supported by advertisements and microtransactions.

EURO 2008 Q&A

We speak to the game’s producer about life without England and the future of the series.

UK, April 4, 2008 – You may not have noticed, but the FIFA series has emerged in the last year as a very real challenger to the videogaming football throne. Last year’s FIFA 08 offered the definitive football package and EURO 2008 serves as a stop-gap before this year’s installment, further pushing the game towards online play and embellishing the game’s mechanics with some extra polish. We spoke to the game’s producer Simon Humber about the new game and where the series is heading.

A stadium, looking lovely, yesterday.

IGN: Do you think England’s absence in the tournament will affect the game’s sales over here?

Simon Humber: I think there’s a certain percentage of people that buy tournament games because they’re engaged in the tournament. I’d like to think there’s a bigger percentage of people who are football gamers who just want the best game on the market at the time. Given that it’s six months from the last FIFA and PES, and six months to the next FIFA and PES, if you’ve got a better game out you can play that for six months, then I’d like to think people will buy it for that reason.

IGN: A great feature of FIFA 08 was the roster update, and the persistent updates and connectivity to the real football world. Is that something that’s going to be a feature of EURO 2008?

Simon Humber: We’ve got one update coming, which is for when all the squads are announced. England were difficult to decide which players to put in, because Capello has come in and changed the make up of the squad a bit. At the moment we’ve left it as McLaren’s team, and when the update comes we’re going to change it to Capello’s team.

IGN: The series is moving to online and social play. How important is that to FIFA’s future?

Simon Humber: Critical. The time of just playing the game by yourself and not being connected to anyone is vanishing, especially with football because it’s such a social environment. As we build technology we’re constantly aware of where that should go in terms of design and being able bring more people into football and making the experience better for them.

IGN: This game is a halfway house between FIFA 08 and FIFA 09, and as a full price release how would you allay fears of people who may be skeptical of buying the game due to its shorter shelf life?

Simon Humber: Personally, I’d buy it because it’s the best game on the market. I realise that the tournament itself ends in June, but come July 1 it’ll still be the best game on the market. We’ve got feedback from people who’ve played the demo and gone back to FIFA 08 and said they couldn’t play it anymore, because they’ve got used to the increased responsiveness.

Some bouncing Czechs.

IGN: Will there ever be a point where the big tournaments could become integrated into one FIFA package?

Simon Humber: FIFA and Euro could never come together because you’ve got FIFA and UEFA, who both want their own game on the market. FIFA and World Cup in theory could, but to do that you’d need to include so much that’s special about the World Cup. FIFA’s got a challenge already because you’ve got so many cultural differences from different leagues around the world that everyone wants you to work in, they want South American football to feel different, they want Southern European football to feel different to Northern European football, so they all really belong in their own products so we can do them justice.

IGN: How do you assign player attributes?

Simon Humber: We’ve got a department in Vancouver, and one in Germany as well, called the data collection department, and there’s a bunch of guys there who run and maintain the database, and there’s a community of editors. There’s a community around the world that gives us the stats, and it’s up to the guys to balance it to make sure that players aren’t under or overrated, we always have an eye on the next big player as well.

IGN: So England are dreadful?

Simon Humber: Individually they’re good, but the chemistry’s not great.

IGN: Congratulations on getting the Peter Crouch robo-dance in there, but we’re hoping that Robbie Earnshaw’s somersault and machine gun combo will be in there…

Simon Humber: I’m afraid not.

Euro blog: Captain Your Country

Euro blog: Captain Your Country

 Matt Prior, Associate Producer

Obviously when making a game like EURO we have to include the tournament and the qualifiers and we’ve done a lot in terms of making the environments, weather, and the gameplay match the teams you are up against. But at the same time we felt that a lot of this is expected; so why not let gamers play the game from a different perspective and experience the highs and lows of a EURO campaign from the point of view of an individual player.

The “Be a Pro” feature in FIFA 08 was well received, but they didn’t have development time to also have a focused game mode based around this; it was just one-off games. We were convinced that “Be a Pro” had potential to be really fun but without any real reward/failure mechanic there was no urgency to come back. We wanted to make a game mode where you had to earn the right to play and really cared how well your team was doing as well as your own performances and add in a little bit of an RPG element too. So from this we came up with the mode called Captain Your Country.

When we first spoke about Captain Your Country it was going to be a one player only experience, but we were so sure that the multiplayer experience would be significantly better that we investigated co-operative play for the mode. Now doing this sounds easy on paper, but there are so many other aspects that go in to making a game mode work for both single and multiplayer such as cameras, feedback, HUD, screens and of course how all this affects the gameplay.

So what is Captain Your Country?

Captain Your Country allows up to four gamers to take their player from a B-International (essentially a fringe player in the international set up) and work their  way up to not only becoming a regular, but also captaining your country to glory and seeing yourself lift the trophy at the final in Vienna.

You can either create yourself as a brand new player and build yourself up over multiple campaigns, or if you fancy a bit of a head start you can pick a real life player and maybe even help England make it to the finals this time round!

The real fun though comes with creating yourself and watching your player grow not only in stature, but also in quality, as every time you perform well you’ll not only get a good match rating, but you’ll earn XP (Experience Points) to improve your  attributes.

As I mentioned you get a match rating and this is key to not only improving your player but also getting picked to play. Perform well in the B-International matches and you’ll be selected for a Friendly match, do well in those and you could be given a shot in the qualifiers, then as captain and eventually captaining the side at UEFA EURO 2008™. That is assuming your team makes it, which is something to consider because even though you’ll rise up to the ranks of captain quicker for say San Marino, it’ll be much tougher to qualify. Of course if you’re not good enough you’ll miss the matches and even if your team does make it, you won’t be going with them.

To add competition to the mode as well as making it far more fun we not only added competition from other gamers, but if you don’t have 3 friends handy, you compete with 3 other CPU controlled players. Having that competition really affects the gameplay as you are constantly looking and comparing your match ratings (which we show throughout the match on your player name indicator) and wondering if you should pass to your team mate because even though your team needs the goal, you just can’t bear him getting the man of the match and taking the captain’s armband from you!  In fact in one of our own encounters whilst 3-0 up in a qualifier we were determined to stop one of our work colleagues from getting a hat trick by fair means or foul. Needless to say he didn’t score, much to his dismay and to our amusement! Of course we would never condone the use of foul means when you get to play the game for yourself!

We also allow you to compare and contrast stats – highlighting the winners in each category so you can point the finger at your mates for their woeful shooting accuracy, or show off the fact that every pass you hit found a team mate!

To add to the competition there is also an ongoing score which not only decides who wins the mode, but by uploading this score for your country in our Battle of the Nations feature allows you to compete with others worldwide and help your represented country top the leaderboards (a future blog will have more detail on this, so watch this space)

To make the game work in multiplayer we had to add a new camera which is called the Co-Op Camera. The Be a Pro camera really takes you in to the moment of playing as an individual, but it doesn’t work for multiplayer, so we set about making a slightly more zoomed out camera that at the same time didn’t compromise the frame rate. We liked the camera so much that it’s even our default camera in regular play!

We still kept all the call for a pass, switch camera focus, and other specific controls from FIFA 08 and also the “Be a Pro” camera, but to make the experience even more enriching we needed some other key elements. Examples of this are picking your commentary name, newspaper headlines, an ongoing news ticker on the central hub that keeps you up to date with all the goings on in your tournament, and last but not least the cut scenes and commentary both alluding to your player’s progress. The latter not only includes your commentary name, and showing you in the line-up but also goes as far as commenting on your performance or the ultimate which is actually seeing your carefully created likeness lift the trophy – I know I particularly enjoyed it when the virtual me stepped up with the captain’s armband to hold aloft the EURO trophy for England, I may have to wait some time before Steven Gerrard can emulate me!