Hello. I'm new to this blog. People in the office call me Jorge. I've been around the EA-Tiburon offices since 2000. Like a lot of folks who work in the gaming industry I started in QA as a tester. A year and a half after starting with QA I moved in with the Marketing department. I took the screenshots and video you saw online, in magazines, and in TV commercials for all of EA-Tiburon's products.

Recently I've moved into more of a support role within EA SPORTS itself. I was asked if I wanted to contribute to the EA SPORTS blog with gaming commentary. It was made clear, my topics aren't to focus on sports or sports gaming, just gaming. This offer makes a lot of people in the office nervous because I tend to say things that would make me a PR nightmare, so I jumped at the chance.

For my first blog I'd thought I'd pull back the curtain and show you some information I provide internally here at EA SPORTS. Every month NPD provides sales figures for console hardware and software. It's kinda my favorite part of the month. So I take the information NPD releases and put in my two cents for folks to digest. Some people find it useful, some don't. Why the discrepancy? Even though NPD and I both look at the numbers by individual sku, folks in the industry really only care about combined sales. So X360 fanboys may want to chest bump over Borderlands selling more on their system, but Gearbox only cares that it sold a combined 531,000 units on both consoles (added to whatever it sold on PC).

Software

Sales are way down year-over-year. The strange thing is that even though the market is hurting, new IPs are breaking out. I think Borderlands is just another example of how shooter happy Xbox 360 owners are. Borderlands was dropped in-between ODST and Modern Warfare 2 and still sold a bunch.

1.       Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (PS3)

How does Naughty Dog lose their way with the Jax series and then make such an incredible game? Good for them.

2.       Wii Fit Plus (Wii)

$20 gets you a bunch of exercises only a soccer mom could love. Taking bets at my desk to how long this stays in the top ten.

3.       Borderlands (X360)

The game 'sent to die' knocks it out of the park. Now, somebody get Randy Pitchford his medication. He's become 2009's Denis Dyack.

4.       Wii Sports Resort (Wii)

Nintendo's plan to seed houses with MotionPlus devices is working. Now, what's the next game from Nintendo that'll actually use it?

5.       NBA 2k10 (X360)

I'm guessing there's about three hundred thousand fans who wish reviewers would have mentioned NBA 2k's online issues.

6.       Halo 3: ODST (X360)

ODST has sold 1.8 million units after two months. Less than half of what Halo 3 sold during the same time period. Not that anybody's counting.

7.       NBA 2k10 (PS3)

Wait, forgot to include PS3 owners. Make that half a million basketball fans who are having online issues.

8.       Forza Motorsport 3 (X360)

Better, cleaner, deeper . . . Turn 10 knocks it out of the park. But it's another example of sales that are lower than the previous version.

9.       Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days (DS)

This brings its total to 370,230 copies after two months. Yoichi Wada has to be excited about that number.

10.   FIFA Soccer 10 (X360)

Whoa, there's soccer fans in this country?

11.   Demon's Souls (PS3)

How does the most hardcore game to come out this year sell so well? PlayStation 3 owners are an eclectic bunch. Odds 3D Dot Game Heroes does this well next year?

12.   Brutal Legend (X360)

An eye opener and a half. I'm halfway through this game and it's awesome. What's Tim Schafer got to do to get a winner on his hands?

13.   FIFA Soccer 10 (PS3)

You know what this proves? There are a higher percentage of soccer fans amongst PlayStation 3 owners than Xbox 360 owners. That's all.

14.   Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story (DS)

Almost four hundred thousand units in two months for a Mario RPG? Man, Nintendo must be glowing right now.

15.   WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2010 (X360)

High review scores, strong marketing push . . . disappointing sales. Not a good time for THQ during their licensing contract negotiations either.

16.   Tekken 6 (PS3)

Yes, Tekken is historically a PlayStation franchise, but it's still always surprising when the PS3 is the lead sku. Sales being lower than WWE, though, is a real bad sign for them.

17.   Borderlands (PS3)

Proving once again that PlayStation 3 owners aren't into shooters like Xbox 360 consumers.

18.   Madden NFL 10 (X360)

Three months in and hanging tough. Can't wait to see fan reaction to playing Ultimate Team.

19.   Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of the Sky (DS)

This underwhelming first month of sales is only a hiccup for the popular brand. My guess is that poor reviews are likely keeping this Pokemon title down.

20.   Mario Kart Wii (Wii)

The lowest rated Mario Kart in history continues to sell even when Wii Play has disappeared off the chart.

The FIFA 10 Takeover Tour has been on the road for almost four weeks now bringing the game to footy fans all over the US.  Over the past week, the East Coast team has set up shop at numerous GameStops through Philadelphia and Baltimore where they also set up in the ESPN Zone to pack crowds.

They continued the week in the DC area where they met with the Vienna Youth Soccer League along with setting up with the City FC, a non-profit youth soccer organization with over 5,000 athletes from under privileged areas of the community.

The team also made a stop in Roanoke, VA where  the state's largest youth soccer tournament was being held.  They set up at two different fields where kids played more than 1,000 games!

On the West Coast, the team made GameStop visits in Portland, San Francisco, San Jose, and Redwood City.

The tour set up at Danny Coyle's pub, one of the top soccer bars in San Francisco where many of the fans watching the Man U and Chelsea game found time to take in the sticks as well as the game on the big screens.

The team also made a stop at the Mustang Soccer Complex in Danville, CA to an awesome turnout at the private facility.  For those that didn't make it to the complex, the crew set up at a large GameStop in Danville where they were able to run a 16-person tournament with the winner receiving a PSP!

Check out the Off the Bench blog for upcoming dates and venues:  US Takeover Tour Week 5 Dates and Venues

Follow the Takeover Tour on twitter and Facebook:  http://twitter.com/EAFIFA10Tour and http://facebook.com/EAFIFA10Tour

It's a bit of a landmark week for the weekly FIFA 10 podcast - episode 40. That's a lot of audio...

You can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes here, but you'd probably do best to just listen to the latest one!

This week's show features the first Live Season 2.0 weekly update of the FIFA 10 era - dominated as the team of the week is by Italians. That's joined by a Newcastle-related Fact of the Week in line with the news their venerable old Stadium is to be preposterously renamed the "sportsdirect.com @ St James's Park Stadium". And of course we have the Big Shout in which we ask you lot what's more valuable - the Champions League or the Premier League.

Have a listen to Episode 40 right here.

The first thing you will need to get started in creating your Game Face is a valid EA SPORTS account. If you have already played a recent EA SPORTS game online on either the Xbox 360 or PS3 you already have an account created. If not you can register for a new account here.

Next, log into easports.com or easportsfootball.com using your email and password created in the step above. Sign up for the Game Face BETA which you can do by clicking the 'Let's Get Started' button in this link.

From the registration welcome page, advance through the all steps ensuring that you are installing both the Game Face Package and Unity software (necessary components for the feature). If you need more clarification on this process you can view the forum help here.

On the 'Final' step of Game Face registration click the 'Create Game Face' button, this will launch the Game Face creator and you can start making your Game Face for Virtual Pro in FIFA 10.

Choose to either create a default character or use a photo to create whomever you wish. Remember when choosing photos to upload, use the highest resolution images you can, the better the quality of the photo the better your Game Face results will be. It is also recommended to use a side photo in order to produce a more accurate rendering of Game Face, this will however, take more time generating than using a single front photo view.

Choose either a default or photo face to create your Game Face

For better likeness, upload a side photo as well. The better the image quality the better your Game Face will turn out.

Customize your Game Face on the Appearance Tab.

After you've created your Game Face and are happy with the results, advance to the 'Appearance' tab to customize your Game Face. ***IMPORTANT*** Click the 'Save' button along the bottom of the appearance tab. You must ensure that you have saved your progress on the web in order to use the feature in FIFA 10 in the subsequent steps.

You can 'Close' the Game Face application, shut down your browser, leave your computer,  and go Boot up FIFA 10 on either your Xbox 360 or PS3.

Ensure that the Xbox 360 GamerTag or PSN ID that is associated to the Game Face you created on the web is logged in on the console.

Advance to the Start Menu and Choose 'Virtual Pro'. Create your initial Virtual Pro and save.

From the Start menu choose Virtual Pro > Download Game Face

Once the download bar has finished go to 'Edit Pro' from the Virtual Pro menu and view your Game Face character. Please be advised that your Game Face character may not look exactly as it did on the web due to different technologies used on the console.

REMEMBER: You can go back to easports.com or easportsfootball.com as often as you wish to update the look of your Game Face Virtual Pro character and re-download them into FIFA 10.

For more on this feature please visit the Game Face forum here.

Cheers.

Darren.W

The FIFA 10 demo went live a few weeks ago - and what a reception. In the first two weeks we had more downloads than any other EA demo in the same period of time. Ever.

We witnessed an unprecedented level of excitement. By the time the demo hit Xbox 360 and PS3 we’d almost finished the entire game and were anxiously awaiting feedback. By the point that you guys were playing the game we’d already removed a bunch of issues in the game: We made sure dribbling was smoother than ever; the ball was trapped even more effectively; headers were stronger from defending players; and that crosses weren’t as exploitable when played in early. We’d also spent time tweaking first-time passes and shots to make them ‘feel’ better, and had fixed a couple of crashes, too. So it was nice to see some of these ‘complaints’ raised on the forums and know we’d already fixed them. That said, we were receiving a huge volume of posts, Tweets and the like. So: thank you, everyone...

During this time we also continued to test the game, read your feedback, and even fixed a few issues. But which issues?

Read the Off The Bench blog for more...