After EA announced a trio of British gents gracing the cover of FIFA 10 in Europe last week, the company today revealed the box art for the North American iteration. Cuauhtémoc Blanco of Chicago Fire and Sacha Kljestan of Chivas USA appear on the box, with Jason Bateman Chelsea's Frank Lampard taking center stage.EA also revealed the game's release date Stateside to be October 20, while a Euro release has been confirmed for October 2. We'll be spending the extra few weeks figuring out what exactly Chivas USA is. Peep the full cover and a new video of FIFA 10 in action after the break.

Continue reading Who? EA reveals FIFA 10 North American cover athletes

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Regardless of how good Renegade Kid's Dementium II turns out to be -- probably pretty good, given the reception of the first game -- one thing is not in dispute: It's got the creepiest damned box we've seen in a long time. It's the sort of thing you don't keep out in the open, the sort of box you make sure is stuffed deep down in the darkest drawer you have. You know, right next to your copy of Elf Bowling.
Permalink | Email this | Comments

As you likely noticed if you've turned on a TV in the past few months, EA Sports Active is being marketed pretty heavily towards the female demographic. So you can imagine the company's surprise when, as they told us earlier today, customer satisfaction surveys from its research group indicated that the Active audience was split evenly between men and women."Although we focused our marketing campaign on women, EA Sports Active was designed to accommodate everyone and our consumer base reflects that," Monique Gomel, marketing director for the game, told us.Unfortunately, there's no way to tell if this is a case of EA not reaching the women it's after or dudes just wanting to get tiny before they get huge and start wailing on their pecs. Let's hope it's the latter.Permalink | Email this | Comments

Activision's announcement that songs from Guitar Hero World Tour and Smash Hits can be "imported" into Guitar Hero 5 (and Band Hero) had everyone thinking back to Rock Band 2's ability to rip songs right off the original Rock Band disc. As it turns out, in this case you won't need a disc at all.We followed up with the publisher to find out exactly how the process works, as it had been referred to as both "importing" and "downloading" on an initial info sheet. The short answer: you'll be downloading new versions of your old songs. "Within the Guitar Hero 5 song import menu, gamers will key in their unique ID from the manual of the previous game, pay a small re-licensing fee and then be given access to download the available songs (like DLC) in a big batch," we were told this morning. That's for PS3 and 360; with the Wii version, the songs can be downloaded on a track-by-track basis."This is done to bring these songs up to date with enhanced Guitar Hero 5 features like band moments, expert+ drumming (new for World Tour songs) and the new vocal star power. The game reacts to these songs as though they were DLC and are available in the same play modes," Activision explained. So, you just need the manual (and a decent internet connection). Unfortunately, this means that some second-hand copies of GHWT and Smash Hits can't be used for the process, as they'll either be missing the original game manual, or their previous owner already redeemed the 20-digit code. "These codes can be used only once," a PR rep revealed. "However, once you have downloaded the content, you are free to re-download it at anytime at no extra cost, if you need to make more hard drive or SD [card] space."Permalink | Email this | Comments