14 DAY TRIAL // Video game publisher Electronic Arts has announced that its EA Tiburon studio is now working on a new download only title in the NFL Blitz series, which will be released during the month of January 2012.
The new game is set to arrive on the Xbox Live Arcade service from Microsoft and the PlayStation Network from Sony and no plans to bring it to the PC have been announced.
The Blitz games are built around quick and much simplified gameplay, with seven players on each side and an emphasis on larger than life collisions between players and quick runs.
It's almost the opposite of the slower and more complex American football simulation that is delivered by the main Madden NFL series, which is also developed at EA Tiburon.
The new game will include High Definition graphics, a new challenge mode for the single player portion of the game and new cooperative and competitive online modes.
NFL Blitz will also include unlockables players who can be earned by the gamer and then used in customized teams.
The first NFL Blitz was launched in 1997 via arcade cabinet and home consoles like the Nintendo 64, the PlayStation 2 and the Xbox got versions of its until 2003.
In 2004 publisher Electronic Arts entered into an exclusive license agreement with the National Football League, which have it access to the licenses for teams and players, which forced publisher Midway to launch a new game called Blitz: The League, which suffered with unlicensed players and team names.
The concept behind NFL Blitz seems pretty similar to that of NBA Jam, which has also been revived recently by Electronic Arts and has been a success as a downloadable game.
That game took on a bigger importance for EA after it chose not to launch NBA Elite 11 because of concerns over quality.