That's a fair assessment. So far living up to my expectations, but then again I'm a massive fan of the original.

I am puzzled by the current trend in games advertising to show the game in such a bad light.

A classic example is the (Sorry Fishta) Nintendo advertising for the 3DS. They go on about how brilliant the technology and 3d is, then show a football game (Pro Evo?) where the character dribbles round in a circle in the box whilst the AI drift and move about like zombies ignoring the fool running round in circles.

Another is the Driver advertising that is spamming the Sky channels at the momemt. It shows a driving sequence with decent graphics and animation and a funky soundtrack. All good so far, but then it shows footage of the driver mounting a kerb and driving along with people panicking and diving out of the way. Only two or three of them don't manage and disappear magically through the car, which looks terrible.

The worst Ive seen was Goldeneye for the Wii. They somehow managed to make it look worse than the N64 version in the ad.

Have a read of this rlarticlerl

It's an interesting piece about Microsoft's demands on publishers of retail and downloadable titles. It would be nice to hear what other people make of it. Personally, I think it's slightly hypocritical, but being a PS3 owner I may be slightly biased

But that is exactly what happens now with Microsoft's timed exclusives, which was the point I was making.
Off the top of my head, the only third party title on the PS3 and not 360 I can think of is Trine.

It's a competitive market. Microsoft are competing with Sony. Sony will make similar threats and it's up to developers to weigh up the commercials with each game.

Live is such a goldmine for publishers that Sony would have to pay a lot of money for it to be feasible. To add to that PSN isn't as much of a focus to Sony as Live is to MS, so the lack of exclusives in arcade games is understandable. Most AAA games now are focused on the online capability and have sold better on the Xbox because of Live's superiority over PSN. So exclusives will be rarer and more expensive given the size of the user base you'd be missing out on.

But yeah, to answer your original question it is hypocritical and selfish. They want the exclusives for themselves and want to deny Sony quality exclusives. But that's just business right?

Quote: Roddy B "I was saying this stuff months ago, it's why I stopped playing it. I can win on any level with ease, the problem is, you have to do the same old crap to win. You can't play a slow possession game, you can't dribble past numerous players or break a team down, there's only two ways to score from open play, and this is them Not completely true, pal. www.ea.com/uk/football/videos/ugc/91432312

Quote: Roddy B "I was saying this stuff months ago, it's why I stopped playing it. I can win on any level with ease, the problem is, you have to do the same old crap to win. You can't play a slow possession game, you can't dribble past numerous players or break a team down, there's only two ways to score from open play, and this is them Not completely true, pal. www.ea.com/uk/football/videos/ugc/91432312

Anyone else pre-ordered FIFA12? Xbox gamertag is busngabb if anyone wants to add me in preparation for your disection when it's released.

(Anyone who is half decent need not apply as I'm terrible).

Why is FIFA's RRP £55?

And what is the special edition?

Standard RRP for any game is £49.99. FIFA 12s is £54.99 because of the special edition pre-order.



The special editions are where you get the game plus either 18 or 24 gold Ultimate Team Packs. You get these to download 3 or 4 per month for the next six months.

Ultimate Team gold packs cost 80MS points on FIFA 11. So if the prices are the same that's 1440 (or 1920) MS points you get with the special edition. Which at £0.85 per 100 points equates to a £12.24 saving for the 18 pack edition or a £16.32 saving for the 24 pack edition.

I think the special edition is pre-order only? I might be wrong on that.

Order it off shopto.net. Its cheaper, and you get it the day before it goes on general release most of the time.

Been playing the PES demo today and I'm actually really enjoying it. It's not perfect, but by heck it's a lot more realistic than Fifa. Crisp passing, good control with time and space to pick out the run and weight the pass up. Real deflections and tackling reactions, proper balance physics with pace and strength being reflective of stats. It seems a really good game and I've enjoyed playing the demo so far

The only flaw so far is the long shooting, which actually seems a bit too good for now, I've scored a few stormers which the 'keeper should have got to, maybe it's a problem with the goalkeeping?

The thing that has impressed me the most has been the way everything seems responsive and 'real'. In Fifa, if you have a shot that the defender blocks, the majority of the time, he will just control it as though it was a soft pass, or the ball will deflect straight to a player. On PES, you have things like 50/50s, you have true deflections and the header I scored before was really reflective of the difference between the two games. I put an out-swinging corner into the box, my player who was running across the penalty spot jumped in the air and just steered the ball into the top corner. It was no running power header, it was like a real goal, using the pace of the ball and steering it in. On Fifa, you simply don't score goals like that, as all headed goals are power headers where you've got the march on the defender.

As I was saying, so far I'm impressed. The game seems to have good physics and balance, whilst it isn't perfect to look at or listen to (is there really no commentary?), in terms of gameplay, it's really strong. Only problem is, IMO, it seems to be made for the arcades, which is kind of understandable with it being Japanese, but for those that aren't after that and want the casual style of Fifa, then PES probably isn't for you.

Anybody on here got the new Madden yet? If so does anybody know of the best ways to build up coins on Madden Ultimate Team without actually buying packs/coins? PS3 if that makes any difference.