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To give you a general overview, Live Season 2.0 = Live Season improvements + My Live Season.

Let’s start with the Live Season improvements…

For Live Season we will provide fresh player form that affects player attributes and overall based on their real world performance. After you have purchased Live Season 2.0 for any of the 6 leagues we offer this year, you have the choice to use the updated player values in offline Kick-off and Online ranked match. So far so good – this is what we provided last year as well.

From the first moment you go into FIFA 10 you will see that Live Season 2.0 plays a bigger role, we even have our own Main Menu item now. The first time you enter the menu you are going to see a tutorial video that will explain how to get Live Season 2.0 from the FIFA Store and how to play the brand-new game mode “My Live Season”.

Once you’ve watched the tutorial you can purchase leagues, enter My Live Season, download the latest update and much more from here. It is your one-stop-shop to enter the world of Live Season 2.0.

Before we get to My Live Season, the biggest addition to Live Season 2.0, let’s stick with this menu for a moment.

We have the “Download latest update” option, which is pretty self explanatory. Every Wednesday is “Live Season Day” and new data will become available for you to download. Note that the ticker in the bottom will always show you when new data is available.

League summary is a screen that has returned from last year, it will give you a quick overview about your club and all other clubs from the leagues you’ve purchased. This is also where you can see the “Team of the week”, by pressing X on the 360 or Square on the PS3.

Team summary is a new screen that allows you to review the form of all players in the leagues you own. We found that last year it was quite cumbersome to check-out your opponents form. This screen will shed some light on the clubs you match up against.


Another neat feature is that you can now view each player’s bio and check out the effect form has on all player attributes.

Ok, enough beating around the bush. Let’s get to the feature I’ve really wanted to tell you about for weeks now – My Live Season.

This is a brand-new game mode that you will automatically unlock as you purchase any Live Season league. This mode allows you to take control of your favorite club and rewrite its season. On every match-day we collect tons of data (approx. 13.000 pieces of data every week) and upload that to a server. When you pick the club you want to control for the duration of the 09/10 football season, all the real world results of the season to date will be downloaded. Only exception are your own clubs results, as you’ll play them to determine their fate. That’s where the beauty of this mode lies, you can actually compare how you are doing with your club, against how they are doing in real life as all the other results are based on real world match outcomes.

Let’s have a look how that works on any given match-day.

First you will choose your club…


...then you will download the latest available match-day, as I’ve started a new My Live Season this will be match-day 1.

As you can see the results are all the ones that occurred on the 1st match-day in the Bundesliga. As I’ve picked Stuttgart my result is “To Be Determined”. Once I arrive in the My Live Season Hub, the first thing I will see is that Stuttgart lost its first match 2-0 vs. Wolfsburg (last year’s Bundesliga champion).

Clicking on next match will allow me to replay the match against Wolfsburg, now I can actually win the game for my team and rewrite its’ season.

As you can see, I can also play friendly matches. This option allows me to play any match-up that happened that match-day with the real world data – but the result will not overwrite the real world result. Even if you play your clubs fixture, it will only be for practice, the result will not be tracked in the standings.


So here’s what happened when I tried to rewrite Stuttgart’s season – in the 19th minute I went ahead 1-0, Cacau scored on a break-away. In the 25th Progrebnyak hit the post, so I am going into the half time break with a one goal lead. Looks like Wolfsburg’s 16 match win streak at home is going to fall in My Live Season. Wolfsburg comes out strong in the 2nd half, but Grafite and Dzeko can’t put the ball in the back of the net. In the last 10 minutes Wolfsburg risks everything which allowed me to get 1 or 2 chances on the counter. On one of them Cacau hit the post with a delicate chip shot, but in the end I didn’t need a 2nd one. The match ends 1-0 for Stuttgart and Tasci deservedly wins “Man of the Match” as he was rock solid in defence!

At the end of the game I get a screen that shows me a comparison between Stuttgart’s real world position and the My Live Season Position...

From here I can also see, that I’ve just played 1 match in My Live Season, but there are 3 more matches available to play before I catch up with the real world. The amount of remaining matches also shows on the My Live Season Hub.

You can play all remaining matches whenever you like – when you run out of matches you have caught up with reality and have to wait until the next match-day is played in the real world. In the meantime you can still play as many friendlies as you want or start another My Live Season with a different club. Darn, now I am hooked again and need to play the next couple of games to get my club to the top of the table.

One last thing, today the Beta version of the FaceGen technology was released, a couple of weeks ago I promised several people to post my GameFace. Here it is, of course I am in a Stuttgart jersey…


Looking so tense fighting for the ball…

Until next time...let’s FIFA 10!!!

Cheers,
Marcel