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EA Sports Seeks to Enhance Madden NFL 13 Experience with Feedback from Gamers

August 8, 2012 by

EA Sports: Madden NFL 13

Pretty much every football fan I know either has a version of Madden NFL or has a friend whose house they sneak over to play the game, something that has made it one of the top video games of all time, if not the top.

The releases of the latest version of the game each year led to a stampede down to the local outlet to grab a copy and try to get a head start on viewing the changing skill sets of players as the game evolved. No other game could compare.

However in recent years an evil foe has risen to threaten its position at the apex of sports game superstardom, soccer! That’s right, FIFA, the game on soccer published by Electronic Arts, also the publisher of Madden NFL has threatened its top dog position and even overtaken it, only to eventually to fall back.

This season EA is taking steps to enhance the fan experience even more in the upcoming version of Madden NFL, that being it will enable fans to vote on top players at various positions and skill sets, the results of which will be added to the final release, which is due Aug. 28, although if you have Season Ticket you can get an early release on Aug. 24.

The most recent question in front of fans on its Facebook page, at least of this writing, is who should be the most elusive running back in Madden 13? LeSean McCoy appears to have a sizable lead over both Adrian Peterson and Jamaal Charles.

Head over to the Facebook page and you can also read the results of previous votes, with the running back position being the most recent to have its various skill sets broken down. I wonder if they have found any attempts at packing the ballot box?

While with just three options even the worst is still an elite player but we have seen attempts to pack the vote during all star voting for real teams over the last few years so why not here? It would be interesting to see a series of write-in candidates get strong support, despite their poor numbers, if just to see the angst this would cause serious gamers.

According to a brief piece in Forbes, Madden had been seeing declining sales over the last five years, and that this year has seen an upsurge in pre-orders prior to the release of the final copy of the game in a few weeks. Hard to say that the two are related but it certainly seems possible.

Filed Under: EA Sports, Fantasy Sports, FIFA, Madden NFL 13, NFL Tagged With: ,

PlayerLync expands its iPad playbooks to College

August 7, 2012 by

PlayerLync, a app developer that has captured five National Football League teams as customers for its electronic playbook app that runs on Apple’s iPad has now made the leap to college football with Stanford University using the technology for its players.

The school announced that it has ditched traditional paper notebook playbooks, which can often run to 500 pages and need to be reprinted on a weekly basis, in favor of PlayerLync’s tablet-based offering.

The move to iPad appears to bring significant advantages to the school. Aside from eliminating the need to print out new playbooks to match each opponent, the platform allows coaches a great deal of flexibility in customizing the playbooks for individual players as well as team units.

The technology permits coaches to prioritize plays and keep them at the front of the playbook so that players understand the importance of the selected plays. Other areas of customization include by opponent, situation, role and player, both home and opponent.

Overall the technology can show plays, formations, route trees and can display them in a chalkboard or audio/video mode, with the ability to toggle back and forth between the two modes.

Aside from the playbook aspect of the technology it also brings a range of other features into a unified, networked solution as well. It features a calendar that can be customized by an individual and shared throughout an organization.

The NFL has been moving ahead with using tablet-based playbooks, with at least nine teams having announced that they will be using them in the upcoming season. PlayeLync is the developer for 5 of these teams while a number of MLB teams are also starting to use tablets in a variety of areas including for scouting purposes.

The opening up of the college ranks presents a great new market for the company, as the number of Division A schools alone dwarfs the opportunity that the NFL presents. Once in a school it seems likely that the technology will find its way to others ports such as basketball, so PlayerLync has opened a huge new market for its products.

Filed Under: Apple, iOS, iPad, Major League Baseball, NBC Sports, NCAA Football, NFL, PlayerLync Tagged With: , , ,

Friday Grab Bag: Samsung, Lenovo Tablets-Seattle bickers about stadium

August 3, 2012 by

We mentioned last week that there is now an ongoing attempt to build a new basketball arena in Seattle and then land a new team. From this article in the Seattle PI it looks like the Seattle City Council could be a roadblock.

While the county commissioners are expected to give approval to an $80 million contribution to the building, the city looks like it might want a better deal for the $120 million that it is being asked to throw in as well. The city wants better protection from financial fallout among other issues.

Microsoft wants broad patent licensing deal with Motorola
After winning cases at home and abroad regarding its patent portfolio Microsoft has said that it wants to sign a deal with Motorola that will end the legal disputes between the two companies. Microsoft already licenses its ActiveSync technology to others including Samsung and HTC, according to IT World.

However in the case of Motorola, Microsoft is looking for a more all-encompassing deal, one that will include not just a select few patents but rather a great deal of their respective portfolios in order to achieve what Microsoft calls “A solid foundation for patent peace.”

Larger tablets can be heavy

Samsung thinking big with next-gen tablet?
Kudos to the Verge for digging into all of the documents from the ongoing Apple vs. Samsung trial in San Jose, Calif. Among the nuggets it has mined is the revelation that Samsung has a 11.8-inch tablet on the drawing board.

Code named P10 it would have the equivalent of Apple’s retina display with a 2560 x 1600 resolution and among its other features is LTE connectivity.

Google investing in YouTube effort
It looks like Google is going to invest $200 million in marketing its YouTube channels as it continues its transition of that platform from one in which the majority of content is user generated into one where there are a wide range of professionally created content.

It has over 100 channels now and currently is teamed with NBC to show the Summer Olympics. According to a piece in the Wall Street Journal, Google currently has already earned $150 million in ad commitments for this year.

Google to delay its Nexus Q digital streaming device
Google announced its Nexus Q music and video streaming platform to great fanfare a few weeks back at the company’s annual Google I/O conference in San Francisco. Expected to be quickly delivered to the market it looks like it has hit a bump in the road and its delivery is now delayed.

The people that preordered have been told that there is an indefinite delay but has offered them a free product. Multiple sources report that the device was beset by poor reviews and that the company will be seeking to enhance the device.

A Bikini Hockey League?
Sounds like the follow up ads after the Swedish Bikini Team that Old Milwaukee Beer ran years ago but no, someone is actually trying to launch a Bikini Hockey League. Actually it is a reality TV show that is based on a developer’s purported plan to create such a league.

Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet leaked
It appears that the ever vigilant Verge has scored again, this time with details on the upcoming Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet 2 that will be using Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system. The devices will feature an attachable keyboard and pen input as well as the usually features that users have come to expect.

Among the listed features for the tablet are that it will be powered by an Intel Clover Trail microprocessor, have 2GB of RAM and a 64GBs of storage with a 10.1 inch WXGA display. It will have a fingerprint reader and they keyboard will have trackpoint navigation.

MLB’s Powers that be endorse Expanded use of Instant Replay
Bud Selig, the Commissioner of Major League Baseball said last Friday that the sport plans to implement the extended use of instant replay. It will now also be used for trapped balls in the outfield, and to determine if balls down the first and third base line are fair or foul.

The league is now assessing the camera angle issues in each park to see what, if any difficulties it will have in placing cameras that have the needed angles. It is not likely that the extended replay will make an appearance prior to the start of next season

Cleveland Browns sell for $1 billion
At least that is what ESPN’s Adam Schefter tweeting yesterday. It seems that James Haslam will be buying the Browns from Randy Lerner for that figure, with a $700 million initial payment and then a second one sometime down the road for $300 million more.

The team just underwent a major shakeup in top management a few years ago, notably luring Mike Holmgren into the front office by giving him the position of team president. Usually new management likes its own people in place so he could be back looking over some other execs shoulder in the near future.

Cleveland Browns

I do like the comment on the tweet that questioned why anyone would pay that much for such a poor franchise noting that a Hawaiian island just sold for $600 million, implying that might have been the better deal.

Filed Under: Baseball, Cleveland Browns, ESPN, HTC, Lawsuit, Lenovo, Major League Baseball, Microsoft, NBA, NFL, NHL, Tablets, Twitter, Windows 8 Tagged With: , , , , , ,

USFL Showing Signs of Life-Still No Proof We will See Games Next Spring

July 31, 2012 by

A while back we mentioned that the United States Football League had risen like a phoenix from the ashes and thanks to an investor was seeking to establish itself as a viable spring football league. At the time there was scant information about the USFL’s plans but the league has been slowly releasing information about its plans so it seems an update is in order.

An entity called EndZone Sports Management purchased all of the rights to the league from Michael Dwyer, who held the rights. EndZone was founded by Jamie Cuadra who is also the President and Chief Executive Officer of the USFL. The deal did not include any of the old teams, and new ones are in the process of being created.

A tour has started to evaluate potential cities and the USFL said that it wants places that teams will want to stay and establish themselves rather than engage in the migratory pattern that has plagued other startup football leagues. At the same time it is evaluating owners for the teams.

It plans to operate in much the same manner as Major League Soccer does, which in part means that the players and the coaches are under contract to the league and not to the individual teams. I also believe that MLS soccer has a semi-hard salary cap and that the bulk of the players salaries come from advertisers, particularly Adidis, which has a huge sponsorship deal with the league that it signed a few years back.

The league’s advisory board includes Jim Bailey who was executive vice president of the Cleveland Browns/Baltimore Ravens for 21 years who heads up the business operations side. Former pro footballers Marshall Faulk and Jeff Garcia along with athletes coach and trainer Terrell Jones join Bailey. On the Football operations side there is former Raiders great Fred Biletnikoff, who was also a coach for two teams in the original USFL

The overall goal of the league is to launch a 14 game season starting in the Spring of 2013 with eight teams playing and a championship event game in June. It is hoping to establish relationships with other leagues (read NFL) and will use the NFL rule book for its games.

It has also refreshed its web site to look much more professional and created a new logo so that it has a clean break from the past and a new image to brand itself to. The leagues logo will be “Real. Fun. Football.” I guess that is better than the No Fun League.

We will check in again in a few weeks to see how things have progressed. Hopefully it will have cities, team names and possibly a broadcasting and/or live streaming deal in place as well.

Filed Under: MLS, NFL, USFL Tagged With: ,

Football (The US Version) Applying for Olympic Recognition?

July 30, 2012 by

I caught an interesting piece in ProFootballTalk that said that the International Federation of American Football (IFAF) was applying for Olympic recognition and looking to promote the game on the international stage at some point.

According to a piece at NFL.Com the application will be looked at next year and the article compared how the US once dominated basketball and now others have caught up. Really it often seems that the loss 2004 had other issues that cause the defeat and ultimate disappointing bronze.

I had never really considered football as a sport that fit well in the Olympics format, or one that would do well if selected, and that is not because of the possibility that it is not accepted by other nations. Rather the problem is that it seems to me that with all of the qualifying rounds and matches (assuming they do it like soccer), the sport would continue on from the end of the NFL season until the start of the Olympics.

Then once the Olympics started they would have to play a number of games within a two week period, unless they had already weeded out all of the teams but the final four. That just seems like it would not do for the players with the much higher risk that would entail.

Yet there is a much larger body of people playing football around the world that I had imagined as well. In perusing the IFAF web site I was astounded to see how many national federations there was in the organization. With 62 on six continents it is spread from Kuwait to Uruguay to New Zealand with Europe having by far the most nations represented.

They have an 19 and under league, a women’s league and a seniors league, and have played for at least four championships, one played every four years and the next one scheduled for play in Sweden in 2015.

Apparently football was played once as a spectator sport in the Olympics, back in 1932 at the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles seniors from three schools, California, Stanford and USC played a set against seniors from three schools from the East Coast, Harvard, Yale and Princeton. The West won 7-6.

While I have seen many people complain that one reason that the Olympics would never accept football is because of US domination and point to the dropping of baseball as an example, I think that reasoning is at least in part misguided.

Major League Baseball is never going to stop playing for several weeks in the middle of the season to allow its players to go to the games. The lost revenue, the impact on playoff games and a host of other issues would make that move a terrible idea.

If you look at the last 5 Olympics that allowed baseball, the US won the gold once, in 2000, along with two bronze medals while Cuba has won three gold medals and South Korea one. Without the top athletes, which it does not look like they will get, the US probably would not be considered the favorite if other nations managed to get their top people in.

Much the same logic can be applied to the NFL’s reaction. Lose players for a number of weeks at the start of training camp? Well they actually did that last year, and I am pretty sure that no one is happy with that or wants to repeat it.

The only way I could see the US participate is if they took one of the other leagues, the reborn USFL or the UFL and used the championship team from that league. While an all star team might make more sense to some it seems to me that a team that has already played a season together has a better chance of shining in an event such as this.

Filed Under: Baseball, IFAF, Major League Baseball, NFL, NFL Network, Olympics, UFL, USFL Tagged With: , , ,

Are you Watching this Weekend’s Arena Football Playoffs?

July 25, 2012 by

The Arena Football League playoffs start this week with some returning powerhouses and new up-and-comers as the league continues to make a nice recovery after being left for dead a few years back when it ceased operations.

I have a number of friends that deride the league as bush league but in the few games I have attended I really enjoyed myself. It features very high scoring and continuous action. The short field and odd rules really make it a great viewing spectacle, especially in person where it is an inexpensive yet fun time.

For the first round of playoffs, which will see games played on July 27 and 28 there will be eight games, two apiece in each conference. In the National Conference the San Antonio Talons, founded this year, against the Utah Blades in one set while the other will feature the Arizona Rattlers against the San Jose SaberCats, one of the oldest established teams in the league.

Over on the American Conference side the first week matchups will include the Philadelphia Soul against the New Orleans VooDoo and in the other match there will be the Jacksonville Sharks against the Georgia Force.

The winners from both conferences will meet the following weekend for the conference championships and the week after that is the Avitae ArenaBowl XXV to be held in New Orleans with a 10:30 pm ET kickoff. So New Orleans could have a home field advantage if it manages to win out. Some games will be broadcast on the NFL Network while others will be available online at www.ustream.tv.

Just for those that do not know, the AFL was founded in 1987 and played until the economic downturn of 2007 forced it to dissolve. It was reformed in 2010 and has been playing since with 17 teams in two conferences of two divisions each. The season is 20 weeks long with two bye weeks.

What makes it interesting to me is the field. It is 85 feet wide, 50 yards long and has a 3-yard end zone. Eight players per team and they have four downs to move the ball at least 10 yards. Scoring is a bit wide open with six points for a touchdown with one point for a conversion by place kick, two points for a conversion by drop kick and two points for successful run or pass after a touchdown.

Three points for a field goal by placement or four points for a field goal by drop kick. Missed kicks can be returned by the opposition and a safety is two points. Interesting note is that the AFL is the second longest running football league in the United States, after of course the National Football League.

Filed Under: Arena Football League, NFL, NFL Network Tagged With: , ,
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