EA SPORTS FIFA EARTH beta is now live at fifa.easports.com. FIFA EARTH is the premier online destination for sharing all the latest FIFA 10 news, stats, rankings, and more.

Through FIFA EARTH players can get closer than ever before to the real life data that drives the EA SPORTS FIFA 10 community. From tracking the number of FIFA 10 games being played online to the number of wins, losses and draws of individual clubs or countries, FIFA EARTH enables you to keep a finger on the pulse of everything happening within the EA SPORTS FIFA community. If your club is starting to slide down the league standing, FIFA EARTH alerts you, enabling you to take control into your own hands to win more games and increase your overall winning-percentage. FIFA EARTH enables users to connect to FIFA 10 fans from all over the world, collecting EA SPORTS FIFA tweets and football thoughts as they occur, in real-time.

And all this is just the beginning. Just as football keeps growing and growing, FIFA EARTH will evolve along with it to become a platform of infinite possibilities. You decide how big football can get!

FIFA, the world’s governing body of football, Electronic Arts and Sony Computer Entertainment Europe today announced the new season of the FIFA Interactive World Cup (FIWC), the world’s only official FIFA global football gaming competition.

The FIWC is a season-long tournament mirroring the real world of football in which competitors from all around the world participate playing FIFA 10 on PlayStation.

This year marks the sixth FIWC season, which kicks off today inside FIFA 10. Players will be able to compete for their spot in the Grand Final at one of 10 FIWC Live Qualifier Events across the globe, taking place in Australia, Brazil, Denmark, France, Italy, Japan, Poland, Russia, South Africa and the UK, or by playing online. For the first time in the tournament’s history, the online competition of the FIWC via PlayStation®Network will be split into two seasons. Season one starts with the launch of FIFA 10 on 2nd October and concludes on 18th December 2009. The ten best players of season one from across the FIFA confederations will go through to the Grand Final, which will take place at Port Olympic in Barcelona on 1st May 2010. Players who didn’t make it during season one have another shot at their spot in the Grand Final in season two, which kicks off on 4 January 2010 and concludes on 31 March 2010. Registration for participating in the online leg of the FIWC 10 tournament will take place directly inside the retail version of FIFA 10 on PS3 from 2 October across Europe and Asia and from 20 October in North America.

Alongside the 2009 FIWC champion, Bruce Grannec from France, the 31 finalists will compete to be crowned FIFA Interactive World Champion of the Year, rewarded with an invitation to the FIFA World Player Gala along with a USD 20,000 cash prize. The runner up will receive USD 5,000, while the player coming third will be awarded USD 1,000.

“More than 500,000 players vied for a spot in the Grand Final at last year’s FIFA Interactive World Cup. This makes it the FIFA tournament with the most competitors,” highlights Chuck Blazer, member of the FIFA Executive Committee and patron of the FIFA Interactive World Cup (FIWC). “The FIWC is becoming more and more popular among all age groups and the great thing is that everybody can participate. Players can face each other whenever they want and wherever they are – this is truly unique.”

“With the real life football season already underway, FIFA fans the world over are itching to show off their skills in this year’s FIFA Interactive World Cup tournament and they won’t be disappointed ,” said Matt Bilbey, VP Marketing, EA SPORTS. “The FIFA development team in Vancouver have worked incredibly hard to deliver players the most authentic football gaming experience ever with FIFA 10. With the game out now, we’re excited for players around the world to start their journey to the top of the FIFA Interactive World Cup league on the PlayStation 3.”

”The FIFA Interactive World Cup 2009 was a truly incredible tournament, with over half a million people competing, many of which via PlayStation Network,” said Darren Carter, VP for Brand and Consumer Marketing, SCEE. “The FIWC is a great example of what can happen when you take one of the worlds best selling games, mix it together with the world’s favourite games console, and open it up to the community. We are very excited about this year’s tournament and wish everybody competing the best of luck.”

Details about the live qualifier events will be made available over the coming weeks at www.FIFA.com/FIWC, so check in regularly to keep your fingers on the pulse of the FIFA Interactive World Cup 2010.

The weekly charts were released yesterday morning with EA’s yearly update of the franchise firmly taking the top spot.

One problem with this is in the way it has gained the spot in the first place.  There have been many reports over the last week of supermarkets going head to head in a price war with each other to try and gain market share for Fifa 10.  This has lead to many specialist retailers and chains that specialise in gaming IP’s to be outraged at the price Fifa 10 was being sold for.  Tesco came out with Fifa 10 being marketed for £24.97 whilst Asda and co were retailing the product for around £24.99.

These sort of aggressive marketing tactics can only be bad for the games industry and push traditional retailers to one side as supermarkets make their money up on bread and milk to subsidise and de-value a game where it is not needed.  Fifa 10 is a very popular game and is always guaranteed to sell millions of copies so why is this price point necessary?  What is the point if not to get rid of the competitors, who are very knowledgeable but cannot compete with that sort of price cut.

Consumers will always say that this is a good thing but I have to somewhat disagree.  In the short term it is great.  You get a game that is cheap but in the long run what will the damage be?  If the competition goes and the supermarkets remain will you get the same pricing again for these titles?  Will you get the same selection that a traditional games retailer can supply?  Of course not, supermarkets are in it for the lions share and to gain footfall.  If these retailers go under from the greed happy supermarkets then you can say goodbye to these cheap price points.  With no competition in their way, they will be able to charge full RRP and make you suffer.  Games aren’t for these people, their staple profits come from food and drink which are marked up depending on the mood of the public.  If we are going through a depression then alcohol gets marked up.  If you do not believe me then this was actually aquoted from a manager from Morrisons.  The selection will always be top 20 and you will have to rely in online purchases to chase those titles down.

Leave your thoughts here on what you feel about this situation.  I admit it is nothing new but is something that needs to be addressed before we lose our retail industry once and for all.

Its been over 15 years since EA Sports started making football games, in which time they’ve taken as many steps backwards as they have forwards – FIFA 10 is definitely a step forwards.

The game is quicker, more fluid, more balanced, more real. Finding yourself looking for a certain animation or wishing you could repeat that move from a few games a go is not uncommon – but thats real, isn’t it?

In the right situations you now get quick freekicks, with a player placing is hand on the ball to get the play going again as quickly as possible, the animation is lovely, and I can almost hear EA trying to decide whether I want a quick free-kick here or not. If your anything like me, you’ll probably miss place these freekicks all to often at the start, trying desperately to take advantage of the fact that we’ve not gone to the black ‘reset formations’ screen.

But why are we not able to do this in more situations though? Throw-ins for a start, how real is it when in the 10th minute of a 0-0 game someones misplaced ball flys from the halfway line back towards the corner flag and out for a throw-in, only for that black ‘reset formations’ screen to appear and change what should be a simple throw to your keeper into being a great chance for the opposition to steal the ball.

I would love to see animations for all set pieces, flowing from the ref blowing the whistle to the wall being pushed back cause they’re not quite on 10 yards. It wouldn’t impact on time, you’ll be lining your shot up whilst its all going on.

Cheating and wrong decisions don’t make an appearance – should every offside decision be spot on? or dare I say it, my opponent have the option to win a penalty with some rolling around on the floor? Yes they can ruin matches, but they are real.

At the end of a game on FIFA 10 your filled with the same emotions you would had you have been playing for real or watching your team on TV. The problem is that some of the feelings different events to thank than they perhaps should. The frustration you should have at a referees assistant for not calling an ‘obvious’ offside instead comes from your keeper standing in no mans land and inviting an easy lob. The anger that your opponent won a penalty through unsportsman like acting is replaced by the fact that you wanted to press the clearance button but instead got a slide tackle.

The gaps in the realism will become more evident the more EA Sports refine FIFA and remove the niggly bits of gameplay that have been around for years. But without a doubt though, FIFA 10 is the closest we’ve got to a real Football game.