Unlike some below-par release which has been rushed to meet deadlines, EA has made the surprising move to make Euro 2012 a DLC expansion pack to the existing FIFA 12 game.

It means that fans will not have to fork out on a standalone Euro 12 game and better yet, EA has even discounted the price of the expansion – announcing a very reasonable price to FIFA 12 owners. Starting from April 24th, you will be able to download the pack priced at £15.99 on the PS3, 1600 Microsoft Points on the Xbox 360 and 2500 Fifa points for PC players.

Obviously some of you were expecting a full blown Euro 2012 game priced at the usual £40+, so considering EA’s ‘divided’ reputation amongst the community, this is definitely something that most of you will be delighted about.

As for the expansion pack itself, EA has said that the game will feature all 53 teams competing, as well as officially licensed stadiums located in Ukraine and Poland – the official host for this year’s tournament. So basically expect to see gameplay very similar to what you’re already used to with FIFA 12, but obviously with brand new teams and modes to play around with.

If EA had priced this at the £40 or $50 mark, there would definitely be a lot of uproar about the expansion pack plan. But since EA has met gamers half way with a very good price, there’s no reason to complain about this and more importantly for EA – they are bound to come in for some well needed PR from the community.

So unlike Euro 2008 which launched as a standalone title, this is now a FIFA 12 expansion pack. Let us know your thoughts on the move, and if you’ll be picking up the game or not. Would you like to see more of the same from EA for other franchises?

At the start of February, we thought that the January update would be coming much sooner than now, but at least EA has finally made the update available. As expected, all the movers in the real life transfer window have been made, while there is also one notable addition to Manchester United as well in relation to one certain Paul Scholes.

Arsenal fans will see that their beloved Thierry Henry has now made his way back to the New York Red Bulls and Chelsea fans will be pleased to see that the stats for Fernando Torres remain the same and haven’t been lowered to reflect his shocking form for the club at the moment. Manchester City fans may want to think about re-adding bad boy Carlos Tevez into their squad as it looks like he is now set to play for the club for the remainder of the season.

As you told you at the start of the month, QPR now have two extra strikers in the form of Bobby Zamora and Djibril Cisse and Sunderland can now call on the services of Wayne Bridge via a loan move, although we’re not sure if there was a handshake involved in the deal or not.

For those of you who have already installed the update – are you happy seeing Paul Scholes back in the Man U lineup with an overall rating of 81 or did you expect this to be higher? Just for comparison purposes, Torres still remains on an 86 rating while Liverpool’s number 9 Andy Carroll carries the same rating as Scholes with 81. We’ve seen that a lot of you are not too happy about the rating for Arsenal’s rising young star Alex Oxlade-chamberlain either, who only has a rating of 69.

While the frequent transfer updates are great, it would be even better if EA issued some ratings changes every week to reflect player performances every week in the real leagues. At the moment, it just doesn’t feel right whenever we hear the commentator say ‘‘It’s Fernando Torres!! The defenders were lucky to get away with it! Such a rare miss from him!” – when really they should be saying ”will he ever score today?”

Let us your thoughts on the transfer update and what player ratings you feel need updating.

If you have plenty of spare time on your hands, you could do it yourself manually, but that isn’t really too much fun – especially since there has been a large amount of activity for Premier League clubs. We didn’t see too many high profile transfers in the calibre of Andy Carroll and Fernando Torres’ respective moves to Liverpool and Chelsea, but there are definitely some big names that have changed clubs and should be featuring in FIFA 12 soon.

At the moment, there is no set release date for when EA will make the January Transfer changes in FIFA 12. However, one possible release time for the update could be this Friday at 6pm GMT, as that’s when EA will update their FIFA Ultimate Team database with all the transfer changes. They have already updated the system with changes that happened earlier in the month such as Thierry Henry’s glorious return to Arsenal, but it would be logical for EA to update the main database as well with all the transfers.

What changes can we expect to see then? Strikers Bobby Zamora and Djibril Cisse’s moves to QPR are some of the biggest changes you’ll see, while Arsenal and Tottenham supporter’s will be disappointed to hear that Ryo Miyaichi and Roman Pavlyuchenko have parted ways with the club, although the little Japanese starlet’s move is only a loan one.

It’s a good idea to keep checking this thread over at the EA Forums for any future updates regarding the transfer window changes, but as we said it is well worth keeping an eye on that Friday 6pm update to see if the main database is updated too. If you were following the last day of the transfer window yesterday, let us know your thoughts on all the movers. No additions to Arsenal yet again which is a surprise to us, while we are predicting at least one new striker joining Liverpool – moves for Darren Bent or Jermaine Defoe didn’t happen though.

The game is due out March 30th but as CVG explains those who place their order early will have exclusive content in abundance on offer which allows player to play as other sports stars from around the globe as well as Barclays Premiership footballers. One DLC pack features playable characters including boxer Sugar Ray Leonard, Basketball star Dwight Howard, American football’s Marshall Faulk and Ice Hockey legend Jeremy Roenick.

The other pack will feature Premier League superstars including Chelsea goalkeeper Petr Cech, Arsenal’s young speedster Theo Walcott, Manchester City’s work horse James Milner and Manchester United front man Wayne Rooney. The pre-order DLC comes as part of a series of exclusive deals that Blockbuster will continue to offer throughout the year. The retailer’s head of games, James Morton said they ‘are delighted to be able to reveal the pre-order extras that will be available with Tiger Woods PGA Tour’ through their continued relationship with EA.

Blockbuster has had a tough time over the last couple of years with stores being closed down and going into bankruptcy in the US, as their movie rental service was the main focus and is now being offered on so many other platforms. They will be hoping their new found games focus may just change things around, and if this latest offer is anything they’re certainly on course to do so.

What do you think of this offer? You can check out the screens over at CVG by clicking the link above.

The latest installment to EA’s franchise really stepped up to the fight this time to prove at last that their football game is the superior one. Today it managed to officially secure a fifth consecutive week at the top in the UK games chart, making it seven weeks in total since it was first released back in September 2011. It was already the fastest-selling sports title ever, having surpassed the sales of its predecessor, FIFA 11 by 23%.

According to the report at The Independent, the game has now gone on to make more money than any other sporting game in history, despite already selling 3.2 million copies in its first week of release, which amounted to £117 million. It has even gone on to make more money than FIFA Road to the World Cup which was number one for an impressive 11 weeks in total after its release back in 1998.

Official figures are yet to be confirmed, although according to one of The Independent sources, FIFA 12 has sold approximately 5,047,093 so far, over a million more than FIFA 11 had at the same time last year. Meanwhile FIFA 12’s closest rival, PES 2012, from the series that was actually outselling FIFA 5 years ago, was outsold by them by 25 to 1 in its first week of sales and does not even make the UK games chart top 40 anymore. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim takes the number two spot with Just Dance 3 taking third.

Are you surprised to see FIFA 12 break the record? Which football game do you prefer?

Before we start debating about who is missing from the TOTY let us tell you which players were selected. Firstly Real Madrid’s Iker Casillas got the number 1 shirt and had his attributes boosted from 89 to 93. You can see his a full breakdown of his attributes below alongside the TOTY back four which is made up of Dani Alves, Gerard Pique, Nemanja Vidic and Sergio Ramos – all of these players now have a better overall attribute score of at least +5 compared to what they were previously.

The midfielders which were selected consist of Andres Iniesta, Xabi Alonso and Xavi Hernandez. Once again these players now have an overall attribute score of +5 compared to prior to the TOTY selection, you can see a full breakdown of attributes below. As you can see Xavi has amazing stats for passing, whilst Alonso is better at defending and Iniesta is a much better attacking option.

According to UltimateFifa.com it looks as if Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Wayne Rooney will be the three attackers announced, currently these players have overall ratings of 92, 94 and 90 respectively, so perhaps these will also see a jump of +5, if that’s the case we could well see Messi hit an overall rating of 99/100 – how incredible is that!

If you are lucky enough to get any of these players in your packs you can rest assured knowing that they are worth a great deal in the transfer market, however we can’t help thinking that two or three players could have made the TOTY starting 11. These are Tottenham’s rapid winger Gareth Bale, Arsenal’s in-form striker Robin Van Persie and Man City’s Vincent Kompany – do you agree?

In the comments section below we would love to hear who you think should and shouldn’t have made the FIFA 12 Ultimate Team of the Year – it is thought that EA may soon announced some substitutes, when we hear more we will keep you posted.

By now gaming fans will be used to the annual FIFA title being released, and this year’s offering offered quite an improvement over its predecessor. The game has proved popular as it finished 2011 by topping the UK All Format Gaming Chart.

The yearly soccer game saw off some stiff competition from the likes of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, which finished at number 2 for the year. Finishing off the top three was rival FPS Battlefield 3 that was also an Electronic Arts title.

While Skyrim managed to bag the number one spot at Christmas thanks to some big discounts by retailers, it finished the year sitting at number eight. Just outside the top three was Just dance 3 with Assassin’s Creed: Revelations one place lower.

Another EA title Need For Speed: The Run finished the year at number seven in the chart one place behind Saints Row: The Third. 2012 promises to be another great year for games with the likes of GTA 5 and Halo 4 on route. Many have predicted GTA 5 to define gaming this year, with some even suggesting it will outsell this year’s Call of Duty title.

What was your favorite game of 2011?

The good news, is that Sony hears your pain. The company has recently provided some western Vita coverage for those that can’t bear the thought of playing the new handheld system until a few months later. We told you over the weekend that Sony had released an English PS Vita manual, allowing western fans to get a full heads up on what to expect for the system. Now we have something else to bring you.

That comes in the form of a brand new trailer for the upcoming FIFA 12 game for the PS Vita, or FIFA Soccer as it is being called right now. For the first time, we get a look at how the handheld graphics compare to console, and we have to say we’re pleasantly impressed with what we see. The graphics are by no means terrible and although they obviously don’t compare to console like for like, they are still top notch for a handheld system – especially compared to graphics on the original PSP for example.

The trailer also gives an introduction to how the PS Vita version of the game will come with an exclusive control system, to fit some of the luxurious control features on the new portable. By this we’re talking about using the touchscreen to take a shot and free kicks, while you’ll also be able to use the touchpad located on the back of the Vita to play the game as well – it looks pretty slick.

Check out the trailer for yourself below and let us know your thoughts on the graphics quality of FIFA 12 on the PS Vita. As we told you in a previous report here, this game is set for a release in February, we’re guessing as a launch title for the Europe and US versions of the device. Let’s hope it comes updated with all the January transfers that take place in real time.

During an earnings call, John Riccitiello, EA’s CEO was quoted as saying DICE’s FPS ‘is off to a fantastic start on sales and quality.’ According to reports, despite selling 10 million copies so far, the company is already receiving reorders. Riccitiello went on to say the company ‘couldn’t be happier with the launch of Battlefield 3’ explaining that the marketing and PR it had is the one of the reasons it has been so successful.

On the other hand FIFA 12 has also been enjoying great success not just in sales. Peter Moore a Chief Operating Officer revealed the game ‘is doing unprecedented levels of online engagement.’ According to the report at Seeking Alpha the EA has ‘hosted more than 271 million online games’ within the first four weeks of the game’s launch. He also added that FIFA 12 is ‘the best reviewed sports game of this current console generation.’

In FIFA 12’s first week of availability it sold 3.2 million copies which made it the biggest launch of the year and the most successful launch of a sports game ever. Earlier this week Battlefield 3 became available and has already surpassed that total meaning that it is now the biggest launch of the year. Despite this analysts still believe that Modern Warfare 3 will double the amount of copies sold. Do you agree? Do you think of these two games from EA deserve their success?

Many of those who have played FIFA 12 will have experienced how good it is for themselves. The popularity of the game is undeniable with it having debuted straight in at number one in the UK games chart, selling over 3 million copies in less than a week, making it the biggest launch of the year so far and the UK’s third best-selling game of all time, behind Call of Duty titles Black Ops and Modern Warfare 2.

It was later knocked off the top spot by Xbox 360 exclusive Forza Motorsport 4, which itself became the best-selling racing game on the Microsoft console ever, but still managed to keep hold of the number two spot. This just goes to show just how many copies are being sold. As for the screenshots that have been released, there are eight altogether each showing in game graphics that you can expect from the new Sony handheld which, as we previously told you, is due out February 2012. You can view the screenshots for yourself by visiting NowGamer.

The people of Japan are to see the PS Vita released this side of Christmas rather than the new year like the rest of the world. Sony did announce however that the people of US will be receiving a PSP parting gift before the Vita hits the market. This is probably to keep consumers interested in the older model as the new version is not due out for a while.

What do you think of the FIFA 12 screenshots? Are you looking forward to the release of the PS Vita?