FIFA Soccer 09

CVG: Publisher splashes the big bucks to win FIFA endorsement from England striker

MCV Writes: EA Sports boss says flash graphics no longer a priority – as label refocuses on Nintendo format EA Sports President Peter Moore has told MCV that the label has learnt some hard lessons about developing games on Wii – as it pledges a renewed push on the format throughout 2009.

Taking place on Thursday April 23rd at The Brewery, Chiswell Street, London, this year's MCV Industry Excellence Awards will be the most hotly-contested ever, with 17 accolades up for grabs, across a diverse range of categories covering the entire industry. Nintendo, EA, Ubisoft, Microsoft, Sega and Activision will battle it out for the Games Publisher Award, whilst individual titles Guitar Hero World Tour, GTA IV, FIFA 09, Fallout 3, Wii Fit and Call of Duty: World At War compete for Game Campaign.

Danny Cowan from Gamasutra writes: Gamasutra's weekly column, Saling The World, covers the top five sellers for every available platform in the United States, Japan, and Europe, providing an important update of sales patterns worldwide. This week's charts, with data taken from February 5th, 2009, find Halo 3 and Call of Duty: World at War at the top of North America's Xbox 360 software sales charts, while Star Ocean: Second Evolution and Mario Kart DS drive sales on portables. Data for Saling The World comes courtesy of the public sales information on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, and Amazon.co.jp, with sales split out for each platform and territory, and pre-orders disregarded. This results in a true sense of what games are selling worldwide on the real-time updated service, as follows...

MCV: Mario Kart Wii and FIFA 09 outsell all others in full year

Ve3tro writes, Here are the top 20 games in the UK right now based on sales. The top four spots seem to be just rearranging themselves from last week's, with EA's FIFA 09 now in the top spot.

EA's FIFA 09 has become UK's all-format Christmas number one following an eleventh-hour sales surge at the retailers. The highly successful sports title, which has hovered around the top half of the charts since its October release, snatched the accolade from the bookies' odds-on favorite Call Of Duty: World At War. Treyarch's war shooter had held number one in the charts for nearly a record-breaking six successive weeks, yet promotion at the retailers saw sales in FIFA 09 mushroom 89% overnight, sending World At War to second spot.

ELSPA (Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association) today announced the list of videogames vying for the number one spot this Christmas. And leading bookmaker Ladbrokes makes Call of Duty: World at War its 1/3 favourite for the festive accolade...

There seems to be a problem when the latest Madden sells more than two million copies on PS3, Xbox 360 and PS2 combined in the U.S. in August this year - and just a little over 100,000 on the Wii according to sales-tracker NPD. A few years ago, that kind of sales misery on a Nintendo console would be okay. For a long time, sports games on Nintendo consoles just didn't sell. But given that Wii Sports sparked Nintendo's GameCube-to-Wii console resurrection, it seems like sports games can sell on the Wii. So why isn't EA Sports having an easier go of it on the Wii? MTV Multiplayer recently asked EA Sports chief Peter Moore to tell them what EA was doing right and wrong with sports games on Nintendo's console.

dailygamesnews.com - EA Sports announced today that all 14 international commentary packs in Fifa 09 will be available to download free on both the PlayStation Network for PS3 and on Xbox Live Marketplace for Xbox 360. For the first time, fans worldwide can now download and experience all language commentary packs featuring different commentators from all over the world while playing Fifa 09.