Our goal with the Tiger Woods PGA TOUR games on next generation consoles has always been to offer the most authentic golf experience. To support this goal we have essentially focused our efforts on recreating with extreme detail some of the most famous golf courses in the world. But ever since Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 06 game hit the Xbox 360 about four years ago, players and community members have asked us for a next-gen fantasy course. One course in particular was often mentioned in the forums: The Predator.

So about half-way into finishing Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 10, we sat down to discuss downloadable contents and figured why not just recreate The Predator for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 as a DLC course?

The last time The Predator was featured in the game was in Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 07 on the PlayStation 2 and the original Xbox. The team and I sat down, popped in a copy of the game and started playing the course. I think our first reaction was: "wow, that's going to be a difficult one!" The Predator can indeed be an unforgiving course to play, with some very long holes scattered with ruthless obstructions and OB areas. But our real challenge was to figure out how to recreate such a dense jungle environment without altering the overall design of the course. We wanted to be as faithful to the original as possible so we started by porting the actual PlayStation 2 course terrain data to our next generation engine then began replacing and upgrading everything.

The course is basically a golf oasis surrounded by an impenetrable jungle. We did some research to find visually interesting trees and foliage that would allow us to create a real sense of jungle density. Hole 10 is a good representation of such thick vegetation.

The other big feature of the course is water. Water is omnipresent in The Predator: a river can be seen flowing from most holes and there are a number of waterfalls scattered throughout the course. We did spend some extra time creating and tuning special water-based effects to ensure that the players will witness some really spectacular scenic vista.

Once the course was assembled, we got even more creative and started placing some fun new additions: there are now broken rope bridges (Indiana Jones style), a crashed propeller airplane (Lost was on TV when we were designing the course), apes are hiding behind the trees (can you spot them?), tee markers are actual mini Tiki statues (imported from Polynesia), etc.

I think we managed quite an incredible challenge with The Predator and created an impressive looking golf course that plays really well. I really can't wait to hear the players' reaction and remember folks: this is only the beginning...

See you online at the tee,

Reza

It’s been a couple weeks since our last blog, so we figured it would be a good time to fill you all in on some new things we’ve got brewing here on the Tiger Woods PGA TOUR Dev Team.
 
First of all, the Live Tournaments feedback we’ve received so far from all of you has been awesome.  It’s really helped us figure out where we need to push and pull on this feature in order to make it enjoyable and competitive for all players.  Based on all the feedback we’ve received, there are a few changes that we are looking to make to the Live Tournaments structure in the coming weeks that we wanted to let you in on. 

As always, please let us know what you think about these new additions.  Do you like them, dislike them, do you have some suggestions that might make them better?   Anything goes…

New Tournament Payout Structure

From the get go we knew tournament payouts were going to need some tweaking and tuning.  Once we saw the feature being played in the real world we started making a few adjustments to tournament purses.  We also made a change to the payout structure to increase the number of players who get paid in each tournament and also to level out the payouts across the board.

Having made those changes and seeing the results, we’ve decided to go in a slightly different direction when it comes to tournament payouts.  We’re currently working on a new payout system that would payout a fixed amount of tournament dollars for each person you beat on the leaderboard.  This system would do away with the purses we currently use in each tournament and the winnings would be based on the number of people who have entered the tournament. 

Here’s an example of how this new system would work:

•    We would set a dollar value for each person you beat on the leaderboard.  For the purposes of this example we’ll say that’s $1,000 for each person you beat. 
•    Say the tournament had a total of 5,000 competitors (people who posted valid tournament rounds).
•    In that tournament the winner would get $5,000,000 (1,000 per position X 5,000 players).
•    Each subsequent player after 1st place would receive $1,000 less all the way down the leaderboard.
•    The payouts per spot will be tuned so that we can make the payouts higher towards the top of the leaderboard.  So for example the top 10% of the leaderboard get $5,000 per spot, the next 25% of the leaderboard gets $3,000 per spot and so on.

So using this payout structure will create a more dynamic system for Live Tournaments and reward the people who place high on the leaderboards of the most popular tournaments.


Handicapped Tournaments

A lot of the feedback we’ve received from you guys has revolved around the Live Tournaments Skill Rating and the current thresholds in place that locks players out of certain tournaments.  There’s also been a lot of discussion around round score balancing and how we might be able to make a more competitive environment for everyone to play in.

Based on all of this we’re looking to implement a new dynamic difficulty system that would handicap the field based on their Live Tournament Skill Rating.  So when you entered one of these new handicapped tournaments, the game would automatically determine the appropriate settings for your round and adjust the difficulty for it based on your individual Skill Rating.  People with low Skill Ratings would be allowed to use spin and boost and putt preview, etc…while people with the highest Skill Ratings would be playing on TOUR pro with capped attributes golfers and no green grid.  The idea is to have a dynamic range of tournament settings that would cater to all levels of play. 

The goal here is to remove the Skill Rating as a barrier of entry into a tournament and allow everyone to compete against each other on a leveled playing field.  In handicapped tournaments people of all different skill levels would be competing on the same leaderboard. 

Online PGA TOUR Seasons

We’re looking to create a season structure within Live Tournaments and we need your help to set it up correctly.  The basic idea here is to create a season’s worth of tournaments that would last X amount of weeks.  At the end of the season, we’d crown a winner they’d win some fabulous prizes and we’d start up another season right after that.  So here’s what we need from you: 

Let us know…
•    Are you interested a season structure like this within Live Tournaments? 
•    How long should each Season be?
•    What difficulty settings should we use for the Online PGA TOUR Seasons?
•    What courses would you like to see used during the season?

As always…please feel free to continue the discussion and weigh in with your thoughts in the comments section below or on the forums!

Mike D.

Hello again Madden fans!

Donny Moore here, designer for Madden NFL 10. If you've been following me on Twitter (donny_moore) you've likely noticed that I have been working on player ratings for the game, but what I've had to remain pretty tight-lipped on so far this year has been my involvement with Online Franchise. EA SPORTS president Peter Moore just recently announced this feature last week at the E3 press conference, and we knew going in that there would be all kinds of speculation and discussion over the feature among our fans. So this week we wanted to take the opportunity to answer some of the most common questions that we've been seeing from the community and from the gaming media. Not everyone has a 100% clear idea of what all is included in the mode, and we have also noticed that some folks have expressed frustration over missing features. With that being the case, we felt it imperative to explain a.) why we made the decisions that we did and b.) our plan for the future developing on this new platform. This feature is extremely important to me, especially as a die-hard Franchise guy (for those that don't know I worked on NFL Head Coach 09 along with fellow designer Josh Looman), so it has been an incredible experience to be a part of building a brand new Online Franchise experience - something totally new and different for the millions of Madden fans out there.

Enough talk...on to the Q & A!

Q:  How is Online Franchise different from the Online Leagues included in Madden NFL 09?
A:  First and foremost, Online Franchise is an entirely new mode built from scratch (not an improved version of online leagues). We wanted to provide a real-world 17 week NFL regular season with playoffs instead of a flex-schedule tournament-style structure. The major difference between the two features is the fact that your franchise now persists from year to year, and your team evolves over time. You are now taking over as the owner of the Detroit Lions and trying to turn them into a winner (for example) over the course of multiple seasons.  Online Franchise features player movement, retiring, yearly NFL drafts, progression/regression, and many other features that did not exist in Online Leagues. Above all else, the most important change is that Online Franchise is built around a server-based architecture. What that means is that very little support for the mode lives on the game disc itself…it lives online on our servers. The main reason we went that route was so we could add more features and do extra tweaks and tuning based on community feedback even after the game ships (so our fans don’t have to necessarily wait until Madden NFL 11 for something new to appear).

Along with all of that, thanks to our server-based approach, your Online Franchise can be accessed and changes can be made entirely from the web. If you want to change up your depth chart or propose a trade while you wait in line at the store, you now have the access to do so. If you can't get to your console when it's time for the rookie draft, you can now attend from a website (just like a fantasy football draft). This interconnectivity is what we are extremely excited about as we continue to work and develop this mode for the future.

Q:  Why no flex-scheduling with online franchise?
A:  In Online Franchise, you always play the real world NFL schedule. It is set up in a very similar fashion to NCAA Football’s Online Dynasty feature, where you play your current week’s games, and then wait until the commissioner advances to the next week. With us wanting to make a very realistic experience and include features like multi-week injuries, there was no way to make it possible for you to play your Week 16 game before your Week 3 game. 

Q:  Can I make my online franchise private?
A:  Yes, you can easily password-protect your league so only people you invite to your franchise will join.

Q:  How many years does online franchise go?
A:  You can play 10 seasons in online franchise. 

Q:  Why did you limit the number of years to 10? Why not 30 years like offline franchise?
A: Couple of reasons…First off, we wanted to make sure the game was tuned as perfect as we could for the core experience.  We felt it wasn’t a smart approach to support 30 years if the mode falls apart in year 11. We have also looked at the data from NCAA 09 Online Dynasty and our offline franchise modes, and the reality is that very few players actually made it to 10 years of dynasty/franchise.  I myself participate in an NCAA 09 online dynasty, and we have advanced weeks very consistently (from the week the game came out) and we are only in Year 6 (we advance the current week 3 times a week!).  That being said, we will continue to listen to the fans and give them what they want.  As I mentioned above, with Online Franchise mode being server-driven, if we discover that 10 years just isn’t enough and a large amount of Franchises have pegged out at 10 years, we can make the necessary fixes without requiring a new disc or patch or anything like that.

Q:  How many teams are there in the online franchise?
A:  32 teams.  Just like in the NFL, there are always 32 teams.  You can have every team in the league controlled by a human or you can play your online franchise against 31 CPU opponents to take advantage of the web team management. The choice is up to you.

Q:  Do you have trades? If so, how do they work?
A:  Yes, we have trades and they work almost identical to offline franchise mode.  We support multi-player trades, 3 for 3 deals, 2 for 2, etc.

Q:  Do you support 2 players for 1 player trades, i.e. unbalanced trades?
A:  Yes, we support 3 for 1, 2 for 1 and 3 for 2 trades.

Q:  Can I trade with CPU teams?
A:  Yes, you are able to trade with CPU trades.  You must choose turn the Trade Settings to “ON”.  However, the CPU teams do not have logic as to whether or not they should accept/reject a trade.

Q:  Why don’t CPU teams run logic for things like trade proposals?
A:  That is something that we sorely wanted to squeeze in for Madden NFL 10, but simply could not pull it off in time.  Because everything was built to be server-based for Online Franchise, things like CPU logic would have to be run on that server, so we were not able to make that a part of the online franchise experience by the time the game will hit the shelves. Based on usage once the game is released we will obviously look to update and change whatever the community feels is most important.

Q:  OK, so can we trade ONLY with human teams so we don’t have to worry about CPU teams and their lack of trade logic?
A:  Yes, you can play with the Trade Settings set to “ON – with no CPU trades”.  This means, for all trade screens, only human teams will show up to trade with.  This is the default setting for Madden NFL 10 online franchises.

Q:  Do you have NFL Drafts in online franchise?
A:  Yes, at the end of each season, the NFL Draft is there for you to re-stock your talent with brand new rookie classes.

Q:  Do you have the option to start out the online franchise with a fantasy draft?
A:  Yes, this is probably my favorite feature when it comes to the Madden NFL 10 online franchise.  Instead of always having to load into an online franchise with the default, 2009 real-world rosters, you have the ability to do a fantasy draft and completely balance out the league in terms of talent.  So if you are in one of those competitive Madden Leagues where everyone wants the ultimate challenge and everything to start out balanced, fantasy draft is the way to go.

Q:  How many rounds is a fantasy draft?
A:  Fantasy drafts pick an entire 54 man roster.  So the draft lasts 54 rounds.

Q:  54 rounds!?!  Man, that sounds like it could actually take an entire weekend to finish.
A:  We’ve done some things to help you get around that.  First, we give the commissioner the ability to change the time per round to draft.  Once you get past the first rounds you can set the pick time to as low as 15 seconds per pick.  Secondly, the CPU teams rapid fire pick.  We realize nobody wants to sit around for the CPU to pick, so that takes up little to no time each pick.  Finally, we actually give the Commissioner the ability to “pause” the draft at any time.  This means you can pause it one day, and pick it back up at some later point to continue. 

Q:  What about if I cannot make the live draft…Is there any way to pre-rank my players?
A:  Yes, we allow you to pre-rank your players in the event where you cannot attend the live draft.  This is set up in a similar way to fantasy baseball or football leagues.  You can pre-rank each position with the players you want; in the order you want to draft them.  This applies for both NFL seasonal drafts and fantasy drafts.

Q:  Can I draft from my PC?
A:  Yes, you can draft from the web using our Madden NFL 10 online franchise application or from your console, and members of your draft can be mixed on either platform. I believe this represents the first time in EA Sports history that a player on a console can be directly interacting with a player on the web…which for us is a huge win. This is a great example of how a server-based architecture allows us to do features we never really were thought possible before.

Q:  Does Online Franchise support the NCAA Import Draft Class feature?
A:  No, unfortunately this did not make the final feature list this year.  This is one of my absolute favorite features amongst all of our football games here at EA Sports, and we have some good ideas on how we can try to update this after the game launches based on community demand.

Q:  Does online franchise have player contracts or the salary cap?
A:  No, this was the hardest pill to swallow for the entire design and development team this year as far as cut features go.  But the reality of this decision was that we were able to get all of the other features of online franchise, and we were able to make it all in time to get into the Madden NFL 10 box. Just like with CPU trade logic, we will balance what features are most important to the community and try to attack those first after the game comes out.

Q:  So no free agency either then?
A:  Actually, we do have a free agent wire.  You have the ability to cut players in online franchise and then sign a free agent to replace him.  That means when you release them to the free agent wire, they become available to the rest of the league.  If you are in a Franchise with your friends, you could submit waiver claims to your commissioner and have him determine the order of who gets what free agent like a fantasy league (this is what we’ve been doing here at work). However if you are in a Franchise with strangers this will just be first-come first-serve. 

Q:  So how long does the player stay on your team?
A:  Since we do not have contracts in online franchise, players stay on your team until they retire or until you trade them away.

Q:  So no free agency, no contracts, and no salary cap…that stinks!  Why didn’t you put them in?
A:  Many have asked why we left these features out, and the simple answer is that there just wasn’t enough time to get it in before the game hits the shelves. Creating a 100% server-based Online Franchise mode with full stat tracking and numerous other features wasn’t a very quick task. :) It took a major effort from our team to get to what we were happy with in a 1st year feature. The good news here though is that we HAVE given you a way to simulate this important part of the NFL off-season.  We have given you a way to handle all of your offseason player movement, player contracts, etc. with your own house rules.  The commissioner will have the option to Add/Drop players at will during the offseason (this is a website exclusive feature).  I can give you an example of what we are already doing here at the office in our online franchise…Each team in the league is forced to give up five 70+ OVR players to free agency (we all agreed on the CPU team players to release).  We then took that list, and did a quick free agency draft with that list of players.  The commish then went into the Commissioner Options screen and add/dropped the players to the new teams.  While this is not exactly ideal, it does give those folks who are looking for a very realistic Franchise experience a way to have offseason player movement every year.  We are actively looking at a robust, live bidding free agent type feature for the future, but a lot depends on the priority you all (the fans) give us on each feature once you get your hands on online franchise.

Q:  Do you have multi-week and season ending injuries in online franchise?
A:  Yes, we do.   We also have career-enders as well (very rare).

Q:  You mentioned retirements, so players retire in online franchise?
A:  Yes, we have player retirements in online franchise.  It uses basically the same logic as offline franchise here as well.

Q:  Do players progress during the 10 year online franchise or do their ratings always stay the same?
A:  Yes, we have the full player progression system as offline franchise mode does.  Rookies like Mark Sanchez and Aaron Curry progress in their ratings while the old vets like Zach Thomas and eventually Peyton Manning will decline in skills as they edge closer to retirement. 

Q:  is Edit Player available in online franchise?
A:  Unfortunately no, this feature was not implemented for year one.  We felt it opened up too many doors for people to find exploits by messing with things like changing positions, ratings, etc.  We would have had to spend extra, valuable time preventing ways for people to change Julius Peppers to a Punter for example, instead of getting features like Retirements or Progression in the game.  Instead, we felt it was best to simply restrict what you could edit (at least for Madden 10).  We do allow each owner to edit his player’s jersey number if he wants to (commish can edit any jersey number of any team – in case CPU teams need their numbers changed for whatever reason). If this becomes a large community demand we could look into opening this up on the web selectively (maybe for the commissioner only?).

Q:  Is there complete stat tracking and league leaders in online franchise?
A:  Yes, we have full team stats, box scores, and player stats for every game of the NFL Season.  So you can go into League or Team Schedule and check out the box score of any game played.  We also have Player Season Stats and League Leaders which show the Top 50 at each of the major stat categories like Passing Yards, Rushing TD, and Sacks for example. All this data can also be accessed from the web as well as the console, allowing you the freedom to check in on how things are going in your Franchise from work or while traveling.

Q:  Do online franchise games have real weather?
A: Yes, you have a setting for weather.  You can choose to always play in fair weather or you can elect to play with real-world, seasonal weather.

Q:  How do I see what transactions are occurring in my online franchise?
A:  We have a Transactions History screen for you to view any and all transactions from around the league, very similar to a fantasy football website.

Q:  What kind of options does the Commissioner have at his fingertips?
A: The commissioner is integral to the success of your online franchise.  Just like in Online Dynasties, if you have a commish that forgets to advance the week or doesn’t control his owners, the league might fail.  To accomplish this, we give the commissioner several different options:
- Boot Player – The commish can boot any unruly owner at any time. Any CPU team can be replaced by a user team (or vice versa) at any time.
- Promote Player – The commish can promote any other owner in the league to commissioner in the event where the commish goes out of town or is unavailable.
- Settings changes: Skill Level, Quarter Length, Fatigue, Injuries, and Accelerated Clock.
- Post News – The commish can post news to the console so all owners can see what is going on around the league.
- Add/Drop – As explained above, the commish can manipulate rosters to more realistically create off-season player movement.

Well, that's it for today's Q&A. We fully expect there to be more suggestions, questions, and requests as we creep towards launch, but hopefully now we've given some good perspective as to why we had to make the decisions we made, the flexibility of future additions based on community feedback, and also the depth that this feature is offering in year 1. Online Franchise is easily the biggest technological investment that we've ever made here at Tiburon so we are really looking forward to continue to develop on this platform and create fun and immersive experiences in the months and years to come.

- Donny Moore
Designer, Madden NFL 10

Last week we released lots of information regarding our new Live Tournaments feature.  Seems like everywhere you turned there was a story, video or blog to be taken in.  Live Tournaments is such a large feature that it was hard to sum up in a couple days of media announcements.  There are so many nooks and crannies in this mode that I thought I would spend some time focusing on a few of the areas I have received the most questions about regarding Live Tournaments.

Round Submissions and Restarts

These two things are handled uniquely in Live Tournaments.  Each tournament can be set to a limited number of allowable round submissions.  For example the Beginner Level Daily Tournament might be set to unlimited round submissions, allowing competitors to play and submit rounds all day long.  On the other hand, the TOUR Pro Daily Tournament may have a limit of only one round submission per day.  Once you’ve reached the maximum number of round submissions allowed for a particular tournament you will then have to start using the Live Tournament Earnings you’ve accrued to purchase additional submissions.  We also have the ability to hard cap submissions after you have reached the maximum number of rounds, so in some tournaments we may decide to not allow players to purchase additional round submissions.

As in years past, the player is able to restart their tournament round at any time prior to submitting a round score to the leaderboard.  This is a luxury that the boys on the PGA TOUR do not get offered, but this is a video game after all and we wanted to make sure that players had the ability to truly post their best possible score.

The Skill Rating

The player’s Live Tournament Skill Rating will help determine the tournaments they can enter.  This rating is not related to the online skill points system used in head to head online matches.  All of the ratings, money, leaderboards, etc. in Live Tournaments are unique to this mode.  The Live Tournament Skill Rating system will primarily be used to match player’s to a tournament difficulty that best suits their individual skill.  This will help make sure that beginner level players are participating in beginner tournaments and TOUR Pro level players are in those tourneys.  Currently the system is designed to prevent the higher skilled players from entering the lower tiered tournaments by establishing a maximum allowable Skill Rating for entry.  However, the system can also be set up to create tournaments that require a minimum Skill Rating for entry. 

Live Tournaments Tunable Settings

One of the cool things about Live Tournaments is its tune-ability post launch.  Since we announced this there have been many questions relating to just how tuneable the tournaments are.  So I’ll use the rest of the blog to dive into the tune-ability of this feature. 

On a surface level we can control things like:
•    The Tournament Type (Daily, Weekly, Play the Pros).
•    The number of ROUNDS the tournament has.
•    The COURSE the tournament is held at.
•    The PURSE for that tournament.
•    The START and END time of the tournament.
•    The overall DIFFICULTY (Beginner, Amateur, Pro, TOUR Pro) of that tournament.
•    A maximum SKILL RATING for that tournament.
•    Global WEATHER settings (preset or Live).
•    The number of round submissions allowed per tournament.
•    Rough Length, Green Speed, Green Hardness, Pin Difficulty, Tee Difficulty and other general difficulty settings.

Digging a little deeper, we can start to tweak things like:
•    Purse Distribution: We can establish unique purse distributions per tournaments.  Right now the game will ship with tournaments distributing the purse amongst the top 70 players on the leaderboard for each tournament.  However, we can tune this based on feedback or create custom purse distributions for individual tournaments. 
•    Tie Breaker Score: We can tune the tiebreaker scoring system to adjust the importance of certain stats as they relate to your overall tiebreaker value.  For example, we may get feedback that a particular stat is weighted too much or too little in the tiebreaking system. 
•    Skill Rating: As discussed before, we have the ability to tune the skill rating entry requirements for each tournament.  So if we find out that they need to be raised or lowered we can do so.  The system also allows us to set maximum rating levels and minimum rating levels allowed for entry into a tournament.
•    Round Submission Cost: We can set the amount required to purchase additional submissions above and beyond the submission limit.  We can also hard cap the submission limit which would not allow additional round submissions to be purchased at all.
•    Precision or Classic Putting: We can set tournaments that require the player to only use the New Precision Putting system.

Digging even deeper, we can control the following:
•    Custom Courses: We can create custom courses for any tournament.  These can be a combination of any holes from the courses in our game.  Once the game ships we will be asking you all to help us create these custom courses by letting us know the suggested holes that you’d like to see used.
•    Tiebreaker Scores per Difficulty: We have the ability to tune the tiebreaking score in the manner described above per tournament difficulty level.  So for example if on TOUR Pro tournaments the stats need to be weighted a little differently to take into account the added challenge, then we can do so.
•    Max Attribute Cap: Even though we reduced the overall club distances in this year’s game, we understand that there are some who still look for an even greater challenge in our game.  In Live Tournaments we have the ability to set a cap for the players attribute ratings.  So for example if you have a max stats suit…if the tournament has an attribute rating cap of 5 applied, then your golfer will be capped at level 5 across his range of attributes.
•    Unique Golfers: The tournaments can be created to allow all golfers (created and licensed) into a tournament, or we can set the tournaments to only allow a created golfer or certain individual licensed golfers.  For example we could make a tournament in which all players have to play as Tiger.
•    Unique Per-Hole Settings: We can adjust many of the settings listed in this blog on a per hole basis, per individual round, day or tournament.

I used the word “WE” a lot in this blog and I think it’s important to note that “WE” includes, not only the people here at Tiburon, but everyone that plays our game.  This level of tune-ability was added to Live Tournaments so the feature could continue to improve after the game launches based on everyone’s feedback and ideas. 

I hope this helps to shed a little more light on some of details in Live Tournaments.  I’ll be on the forums as always to try and answer any other questions you all might have.

-    Mike D.

I’m excited to be able to announce our plans to reward some of the early adopters of FIFA 09 Ultimate Team (aka "FUT") – we’ve had the plan in the works for a good time internally and it’s great to finally get the word out now.  As a quick intro as to who I am – I’ve been at EA for almost five years and most recently had the pleasure of working on FIFA 09 Ultimate Team with a great group of talented people.  Since the launch of FUT I’ve been working with the Football Live Team, which is an internal team at EA SPORTS™   put together to support our FIFA online products. It was an exciting day when we launched the game, but it quickly turned in to the busiest three weeks of around the clock work.  As some of you are probably aware, the launch of FUT was immensely popular with our FIFA fans, and because of this it challenged our server capacity for the first three weeks.  That was unfortunate for our consumers and we want to make it up to you. 

Now the day has come where we want to say thanks to all the FUT early adopters for their patience and feedback during those first three weeks.  To that end, every fan who purchased Ultimate Team before April 10th will receive 10,000 coins (equivalent to two gold packs).  For every fan who tried FUT but didn’t buy it prior to April 10th, they will receive 5,000 coins (equivalent to one gold pack).  In reality, you can choose whatever you wish to do with these new coins: go pick up that rare player on the trade pile, make a more beefy trade offer, or buy a few packs and roll the dice on getting some awesome players!  Starting on May 15th coins will begin getting distributed automatically to all eligible users.  If eligible, all you need to do is log on to FIFA 09 Ultimate Team after this date and you’ll notice your coin balance has increased accordingly!

And that’s not all, we have a number of other fun ideas coming up for the FUT faithful.  To get all the latest updates we encourage you to sign-up on one of the many different communication channels below and we’ll be in touch on how you can continue to build your FIFA 09 Ultimate Team:

Twitter: http://twitter.com/EAFootballLive
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/FIFA-Ultimate-Team/76974959758
Bebo: http://www.bebo.com/FIFAUT