New Tricks at EA Sports

Ea Sports is a giant. Each and every year, it launches the newest and greatest sports games that get huge sales and positive reviews. Its FIFA brand is positively ancient but still going strong. For the Americans it has the Madden franchise and there's also the popular Tiger Woods series of golf games. EA Sports faces no real competition when it comes to sports games and there are some gamers that take this as a sign of stagnation. Critics say that every new EA Sports game is just a remake with flashier graphics launched at the perfect time to rack up impressive sales.

Well, as Electronic Arts itself is gearing up for a change, with promises of better games, more innovation and less remakes, EA Sports seems poised for shakeup, too. In July last year, the former Microsoft executive Peter Moore became the president of EA Sports. And now, there's excited talk about new intellectual property being developed by the sports branch.

First up, there's Facebreaker, a boxing title that is developed by EA Canada, which is hyped as the game to revolutionize the boxing games segment. And there's the rumor that EA is looking to obtain and then exploit a Formula 1 license, as interest in the sport has gone up sharply last year. Even though Peter Moore has denied that any Formula 1 game is in production, citing the unavailability of the license, fans are still hoping that EA makes a new Formula 1 game.

Such hope can only be compounded by EA Sports' global marketing boss Todd Sitrin's statement that: "We actually have three new original IPs in development, the only one that's been announced is Facebreaker, we haven't done an original IP at EA for several years, not since back to Freekstyle." Sitrin wasn't letting out any details, but it is refreshing to see that EA Sports is producing something new. Even if it doesn't turn out to be a Formula 1 title.

We're keeping our fingers crossed here at Softpedia and hoping that Electronic Arts can really return to its roots from the '90s: originality and quality.