Within Monday's financial earnings report from Electronic Arts was a list of games that the publisher is planning to ship in the remainder of its 2011 fiscal year, which runs through March 31, 2011. Buried in that list was a "Fighting Title TBA," set for release on consoles in the fourth quarter of said fiscal year. We're not sure what that game could be, but here's a clue: it's listed under the EA Sports label.

By then, EA Sports MMA will have released in the prior quarter (fall 2010), so this probably doesn't have anything to do with that. Brad Nicholson wonders if it's going to be a revival of 2008's FaceBreaker (we both hope that that's not what it is). If I had to put money on it, I'd guess that the game in question is Fight Night Round 5, or some kind of Fight Night spin-off -- a Q1 2011 launch would be roughly a year and a half after the release of last summer's Fight Night Round 4.

Let's brainstorm, gang. What do you guys think this fighting game is?

In case you're unfamiliar with Backbreaker, a bunch of folks from the game's developer, NaturalMotion, are here to tell you all about it. The video above is a three-and-a-half-minute developer diary in which they explain why Backbreaker is unique -- not just among football videogames, but all sports games. The studio's Euphoria engine (which you saw in games like Grand Theft Auto IV and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed) is responsible for Backbreaker's realistic football action.

Another key idea in the game's design was to create a pick-up-and-play experience. Having played the game myself, I can tell you that the controls are, indeed, intuitive. If this looks like your idea of a good time, you've only got to wait until May, when Backbreaker hits stores on the PS3 and 360.

2K Sports' Major League Baseball 2K franchise hasn't been good in a few years, so developer Visual Concepts knew it had to up the ante if the game was going to compete with Sony's stellar MLB The Show series. We haven't had many details on the gameplay of MLB 2K10 -- until now, that is.

The three-minute video above explains how Total Control Pitching and Total Control Hitting will work. Both pitching and hitting use the right analog stick. The pitching is almost identical to the system that MLB 2K8 employed -- different sequences of gestures on the right stick correspond to different pitches. I hope it's more forgiving than the pitching in 2K8 was. At least this time, you'll choose the pitch first with a button press; that should let the game know what kind of gestures to expect.

The hitting also looks largely similar to analog stick hitting of MLB 2K games past, but this time, you have the option of a defensive swing to fight off a pitch, in addition to the standard contact and power swings. The video closes with a quick look at the new Batter's Eye feature, which flashes the strike zone and tells you what kind of pitch is coming if your hitter's Eye rating is high enough. It looks rather obtrusive; if you ask me, the Hitter's Eye in EA Sports' MVP Baseball 2005 was better because it was more subtle.

In any case, there's also plenty of gameplay footage to gawk at here, and it looks much better than it has before. Major League Baseball 2K10 will be out on March 2nd for PS3, 360, Wii, PC, PSP, and PS2.

While it's true that about 100 million people watch the Super Bowl every year, soccer is easily the world's most beloved and most watched sport. Madden might be tops in America, but EA Sports' FIFA series far outstrips it in overall sales -- because people outside of this country buy it. The latest iteration in the franchise was FIFA 10, which launched in early October everywhere except for North America.

In the four months since its release, FIFA 10 has sold an astounding 9.7 million copies worldwide across all platforms. Let me break that down for you: on average, that comes out to more than 75,000 sales per day. That's a hell of a lot of folks in their living rooms yelling "GOOOOOOOAAAAAALLLLLLL!"

FIFA 10 received high praise from critics -- it holds Metascores of 91 and 90 on PS3 and 360, respectively. And obviously, that has translated into a boatload of units moved, so while EA might be conservative in their forecasts for the rest of their 2010 fiscal year, they've at least got something to be ecstatic about.

Man, I feel terrible for Blake Griffin. First, he gets drafted by the perennially hapless, possibly cursed Los Angeles Clippers. Then, before he even plays a single NBA game, the Clippers reveal that he has a stress fracture in his left kneecap; the injury sidelines him for the entire 2009-10 season. And now, it appears that he will go down as the last cover athlete in EA Sports’ NCAA Basketball series.

In a fiscal report earlier today, Electronic Arts laid out its slate of planned releases for the rest of its fiscal year 2010. The expected EA Sports games were there -- Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11, NCAA Football 11, Madden NFL 11, NBA Live 11, NBA Jam, NHL 11, FIFA 11, and EA Sports MMA -- but NCAA Basketball 11 was nowhere to be found. As pastapadre.com points out, this isn’t all that surprising considering the poor sales of the NCAA Basketball games in recent years and a nagging collegiate licensing issue.

EA hasn’t officially announced that NCAA Basketball is canceled, but that’s essentially a foregone conclusion at this point. I guess they’ll transfer those folks to the NBA Live 11 team, which is going to need all the help it can get now that Mike Wang has gone back to Visual Concepts under 2K Sports.

EA Fiscal Report Indicates Cancellation of NCAA Basketball and New Fighting Title [Pastapadre]

What, you don’t believe me? Watch the newest trailer for Avalanche Studios’ Just Cause 2 above. Like last month’s multi-path trailer, this video shows off the wide variety of havoc-wreaking tools and techniques at your disposal. One particularly creative use of an object is attaching yourself to a gas canister, and then shooting it so it soars into the air -- taking you with it.

You might want to pick up the PS3 version of Just Cause 2 when it comes out on March 23rd -- it’s the only one that includes an option to record your destructive deeds for YouTube uploading. The game will also be available for the 360 and PC. Apparently, a demo is coming soon!

Last year saw a first for the Madden NFL franchise: two cover athletes sharing the spotlight (Madden NFL 10 featured Larry Fitzgerald and Troy Polamalu). This year, EA is breaking the mold again -- they’re letting you choose between three choices for the Madden NFL 11 cover: New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees, Indianapolis Colts wide receiver Reggie Wayne, and Minnesota Vikings defensive end Jared Allen. This is the first time in Madden NFL history that the cover decision has been left to the public.

As discovered by sports gaming blog Pastapadre, EA has partnered with Doritos (which is an official sponsor of the NFL) for the voting: head to doritoschangethegame.com to pick your favorite player. Gamers were likely expecting the Indianapolis Colts’ Peyton Manning to be the obvious front-runner, but that’s not how EA does things. As Chris Erb, senior director of marketing for EA Sports, told ESPN, “For us, it’s about who is hot and relevant, number one, and then we’re also looking for guys who are passionate, who are video game fans and guys who have a great story.” Erb also explained that these three athletes were the first players that the publisher approached for cover candidacy, and all of them were happy to do it.

Once you register on the voting Web site, you can submit a vote every day from now through March 15th; EA Sports will probably announce the cover athlete near the NFL Draft in late April, as they usually do. I’m expecting Brees to win in a landslide, but you never know. The power is yours!

Change the Game [Doritos]
Drew Brees, Jared Allen, Reggie Wayne contend for 'Madden 11' cover [ESPN]
How To Vote On The Madden 11 Cover [Pastapadre]

If you didn’t give Quick Hit Football a try when I previewed its open beta a month ago, this news might get you to go for it. Earlier this week, the game added more than 30 former NFL players to its roster as “legends,” including guys like Barry Sanders, Warren Moon, and Mike Alstott. They’re part of Quick Hit’s new microtransaction system -- every team gets two legends, but you can also purchase these players with Quick Hit’s in-game currency, Coaching Points.

Speaking of Coaching Points, you’ll get five dollars’ worth of CP (haha) for free if you create a new team between now and February 8th. And if you’ve already got a team, you can attempt the Mega Bowl, which challenges you to defeat all nine Pro Coaches; doing so will net you $10 of free CP. In addition, you can now buy $1, $5, $10, or $20 of CP to help out your team (Coaching Points are put toward training your players or drafting new ones). Don’t worry about competitive balance; the developers have designed Quick Hit so that you can’t just buy your way to victory -- you earn CP just by playing the game.

The game now runs completely within your browser and requires no installation whatsoever, which leaves you with much fewer excuses for not trying it out at quickhit.com. The developers have expanded the game’s playbook, and for the football-illiterate among you, video tutorials are on the way.

(Seriously, if you’ve never been to peopleofwalmart.com, I highly recommend it. It is a fascinating slice of Americana, a rabbit hole from which it is difficult to escape.)

Wal-Mart may not be the first place that comes to mind when you think of pre-ordering a videogame -- hell, it probably isn’t even the fourth or fifth store that pops into your head. And I personally try to avoid setting foot inside the big-box retailer. But I’m happy to see that they’ve got a special offer for football fans that doesn’t even require that.

Yesterday, Wal-Mart began taking pre-orders for EA Sports’ Madden NFL 11. EA Tiburon hasn’t even told us anything about the game yet, but it’ll be out this August, and if it’s as good as last year’s iteration, it’s going to be worth picking up. If you pre-order the PS3, 360, or Wii versions of it at Walmart.com, you’ll get a free $20 e-gift card. (Pre-ordering the PS2 or PSP versions will get you a $10 e-gift card.) You can put the e-gift card toward the purchase of pretty much anything you want on Walmart.com, but you won’t be able to use it in a physical Wal-Mart store.

Apparently, this is a limited-time offer (“while supplies last,” which never makes sense to me when you’re talking about “supplies” of an item that doesn’t physically exist), so if you’re confident that EA Tiburon will put out a great product, go for it!

Madden NFL 11 [Wal-Mart; image via People of Walmart]

Let me answer your first question: “string metal,” also known as “cello rock” or “cello metal,” is a sub-genre of music that is exactly what you probably think it is -- rock/metal music in which string instruments (like violin and cello) are featured as primary instruments. Now that that’s out of the way, we can get to the insane music video above, which was made by Los Angeles-based artist ‘ZZalgern0n’ for a song called “Cobra Strike” by the string metal band Judgement Day (yes, that’s how they spell it).

We’ve all seen plenty of parodies and other things inspired by Guitar Hero, whether they’re Christmas light displays or Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin episodes. You may right now be thinking, “Another Guitar Hero-based quote-unquote ‘funny’ video? Meh. Been there, seen that.” But if you’ve ever trusted my advice on, say, whether to buy a videogame, believe this: the “Violin Hero” parody above is definitely worth three and a half minutes of your time. (The music video’s song isn’t particularly offensive to the ears, either.)

If you hit play, you’ll see a frenzied, madcap video full of more blink-and-you’ll-miss-it sight gags than an episode of Robot Chicken. There’s President Obama’s proclamation that “there’s too much violins in videogames,” which holds true outside of gaming, too, considering the ubiquity of Violin Hero’s purple controllers. Then you’ve got terrorist training camp videos that show the bad guys learning how to use the four-button plastic instruments for evil.

And it’s all juxtaposed with footage of Judgement Day’s three members rocking out with their violin, cello, and drums, as well as shots of violin-crazed kids getting their fix. ZZalgern0n even threw in a nod to the infamous “N64 kid” at the beginning. Yep, Violin Hero is poised to become the hottest gaming gift of the 2011 holiday season (ohgodIhopenobodyfromActivisionisreadingorwatchingthis).

No wonder Paganini’s arrangement of Paisiello’s “Nel cor più non mi sento” is under tier 4, “Satanic Strings.” The piece sounds like it’d be damn near impossible to play on a plastic violin controller.

VIOLIN HERO - Judgement Day - "Cobra Strike" [YouTube via Robert Ashley’s Twitter]

2K Sports has retained its place atop the basketball simulation throne, and it looks like they’ll stay there for a while. The publisher proclaimed in a press release today that it has sold more than two million copies of NBA 2K10 worldwide, a 60% year-over-year improvement for the same October-through-January time frame (2K10’s sales increase was likely helped by its Wii and PSP versions, which did not exist for NBA 2K9). These sales numbers are all the more impressive for having come amid what was, by most accounts, a strong effort from EA in NBA Live 10 (albeit one that sold even fewer units than NBA Live 09).

But perhaps the more startling story is the news that Mike Wang, who defected from NBA 2K developer Visual Concepts to become the lead gameplay designer on NBA Live, is returning to the Visual Concepts team after an 18-month stint at EA Canada. Wang was instrumental in the critical success of Live 10 from a gameplay standpoint, but now that he’s been welcomed back with open arms by 2K, he has some damning words for his former employer, according to ESPN:

But after being there and spending some time over at EA, it was clear that they do things a different way, and in a way it’s just inefficient and just not the place to be to make the best games. [...] With some of the creative decisions over at EA, it just made it difficult to stay there. They just want to make a different game than I had a vision for. [...] For me, it was interesting to be at EA, but it was just hard to get stuff done.

2K’s Senior Vice President of Sports Development, Greg Thomas, even goes so far as to speculate that EA may move away from trying to compete with NBA 2K in the basketball sim market:

... [N]ow they want to change things in a great way because they can’t afford to sell this many units through a three-year plan or a five-year plan. [...] I think EA is going through an identity crisis with their basketball sim.

For its part, EA announced Wang’s departure first, perhaps hoping to soften its impact. NBA Live lead producer Sean O’Brien, in a post on the series’ In the Paint blog, left Wang with thanks and well-wishes. But this is a serious blow to EA’s basketball street cred, and it raises questions about the future of the NBA Live games. It’s hard to imagine a world without NBA Live, especially since (unlike baseball or football) there’s no NBA license exclusivity, but perhaps EA is going in an arcade direction with its basketball games -- and maybe the NBA Jam revival is the start.

Gamer: Mike Wang returns to 2K Sports [ESPN via Pastapadre]
NBA LIVE Update [In the Paint]

Rockstar has announced that the two Grand Theft Auto IV episodes, billed together as Grand Theft Auto: Episodes From Liberty City, will finally be released for the PlayStation 3 and PC on March 30, 2010. Grand Theft Auto: The Lost and Damned (originally released in February 2009) and Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony (originally released in October 2009) will sell for $19.99 each on the PlayStation Network and Games for Windows Live; in addition, the standalone Episodes From Liberty City disc that came out on the Xbox 360 will be available for $39.99 for PS3 and PC. The PC version will include 32-player multiplayer matches and an "advanced video editor" to make highlight reels of the carnage you wreak in Liberty City.

This has been rumored for a while, especially since a patch in November 2009 added Games for Windows Live Achievements for The Lost and Damned to the PC version of GTA IV. And earlier this month, Rockstar teased that they "promise to be very good" to PS3 owners in 2010. As someone who owns GTA IV on the PS3, I guess I should be happy -- it's always great to see more gamers get the chance to play this stuff.

But I have to wonder: Do PS3 and PC owners even care at this point? GTA IV will be almost a two-year-old game by the time the episodes come out on the PS3 and PC, and since its launch in April 2008, the open world genre has seen a significant amount of growth and evolution. Around the release of The Ballad of Gay Tony last October, I remember hearing a lot of folks talking about GTA IV as if going back to it a year and a half after the game's release made its flaws much more apparent, and much less tolerable.

I'd also love to know the percentage of people who bought GTA IV on the PS3 -- over 1 million gamers in the first five days after launch -- but have since gotten rid of their copies under the assumption that the episodic content that was promoted as exclusive to the 360 would never be coming to the PS3. I still have my copy, but I'm unsure if this late port will actually get me to pop it back into my PS3 to play the episodes, especially considering the top-tier new releases coming out seemingly every week in the first half of 2010.

So tell me, GTA IV PS3/PC version owners: Are you going to buy the episodes now that you finally have the opportunity to do so? Or is this a case of "too little, too late"?

Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City Coming to PlayStation 3 and PC [Rockstar Newswire]

If you like videogames, you probably visit 7-11 fairly often -- or so Sony and 7-11 hope, anyway. Ad Age reports that the companies have joined with Mountain Dew, the nectar of the gods as far as gamers are concerned, to put together a major marketing campaign for God of War III that begins on February 1st.

Mountain Dew and 7-11 have created a new Slurpee flavor, dubbed “Kratos Fury,” that the convenience store chain will be selling in four different God of War-themed cups. (If you’re wondering what Kratos Fury tastes like, the flavor is apparently a mix of blackberry and blood lime.) Each cup comes with a code for some God of War III downloadable content, including making-of videos, a Kratos premium theme for the PS3, a PC wallpaper image, and in-game armor. Dew-craving God of War III buyers will also be able to find DLC codes on neck tags on two-liter and 20-ounce bottles of the yellow-green soda.

Ginger Kraus, Sony’s Senior Director of Marketing Alliances, confirms what we all know in our hearts to be true, saying, “7-Eleven’s core target is the 18- to 34-year-old male who is right in the sweet spot for this game.” I am a 23-year-old male. I like Slurpees. I love God of War. That’s a bingo!

As you might expect, this is just the start of a massive advertising push from Sony for this marquee game. They’ve dropped the price of the God of War Collection, which has already sold over 380,000 copies, to $29.99. More marketing and promotions are on the way, so get ready to see Kratos’ ugly mug plastered all over billboards in your town leading up to March 16th, when God of War III will finally launch.

'God of War III' Begins Marketing Push With 7-Eleven, Mtn Dew [Ad Age]

In screenshots and videos, Red Dead Redemption has never looked anything but impressive, so here's another gameplay video to whet your appetite for the game's April 27th (as far as we know, anyway) release date. This particular one takes a look at the early-20th-century weapons with which you'll be kicking ass.

Red Dead Redemption offers a wide array of authentic killing implements, including buffalo rifles, shotguns, revolvers, knives, and even Gatling guns. But it's not just the variety of weapons that's appealing; as this video explains, the technology behind the game -- NaturalMotion's Euphoria engine and Rockstar's proprietary RAGE -- makes the injuries that the weapons cause look very, very realistic.

The more I see of this game, the more I want it. If you want to check out more videos, you can watch the "My Name is John Marston" trailer or Rockstar's introduction to the gameplay series. And you've got until February 15th to choose the GameStop pre-order bonus. Who's as pumped as I am?