FIFA Ultimate Team, the fantasy card game add-on for FIFA 10, is just about ready for release on the Xbox 360, and is due this February. Similar to last year, you can build your team through getting packs in the store, or you can choose to find new players on the auction market.
EA Sports is promising that many features, including the store, is more robust and more user friendly. Plus, a cool feature that has been hinted is the ability to update the store post-launch with new offerings. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t reveal any more details, but we can assume rare players being added after the update is out. To ensure you know when these new offerings are available, a new messaging system is available in the Main Menu.
With this system we can put in whatever messages we want to after we ship – it’s exciting to have a channel like this in the game and we plan to use this to communicate all the special offers and other interesting news throughout the year. The last tidbit on the store is we have introduced the concept of ‘rarity’ among all items received in packs this year. Rare items are visibly different than common items, and also have distinct advantages within the game. For example, for healing items, a rare item would ‘heal all’, rather than just heal a leg injury. For players, a rare player may be one of the higher rated bronze players, or a player with great height, or even a player that has a very high pace attribute. The rarity concept works with all the items in the game, and it has really added some great depth in building your team. Also not to be forgotten, it has definitely made opening up packs a lot more interesting!
The auction market has also received some new features.  This year you will be able to filter by ‘buy now prices’ and also have more filters for clubs and leagues when it comes to kits and badges. The ‘Watchlist’ is also a new feature that has been added to the trading area. For any auctions that you are interested in you will be able to add them to your Watchlist. This essentially will act as a shortlist for all of the auctions you are interested in. No longer will you have to remember and fiddle around with previous searches; everything you are interested in or have bid on will be available in one place.
This year, if someone bids in the last 15 seconds of an auction, the auction will extend back up to 15 seconds. It’s a simple idea, but it’s been so much fun to play around with at the office – and it’s great to feel like you always have the option to respond if you want to. The pressure really increases, and it really feels like an auction, almost like a live auctioneer counting down for those last few seconds. The team also did some really cool presentation aspects around this whole scenario that I’m really proud of – the background lights up and there are some cool sound effects. It’s quite the intense experience and adds a lot of fun to trading this year!
After Ultimate Launches near the end of February, they will also be releasing new versions of players, and also updating any players that have transferred clubs.  So if a player has a great week, EA Sports may select to release a new version of him through the packs in the store.
Anyone looking to pick up Ultimate Team when it releases next month?
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