FIFA 09 gets new online mode

By Robert Purchese Published 10 February, 2009

Card-trading dream team-builder.

EA has revealed a brand new Ultimate Team card-trading mode for FIFA 09.

The service rolls out from 19th March on Xbox 360 and PS3, and will be available to trial using a starter pack for five games before any money needs to change hands.

The exact amount of money, however, is not mentioned. Nor are the prices of extra booster packs. We're after EA for comment, but have heard nothing so far.

FIFA 09 Ultimate Team mode has bronze, silver and gold cards from 30 different areas: players, staff, contracts, formations, tactics, injury healing, team talks, arenas, crowds and plenty more.

The idea is to slowly build the best team around by beating computer opponents offline and human opponents online. There's all sorts of leagues and tournaments to take part in, and, slowly but surely, available resources will rise and soon the top stars will be within reaching distance.

Teams can be customised right down to their badges, and each Ultimate Team player can sculpt a virtual player to join their ranks.

EA reckons this will add "hundreds of additional hours" of gameplay to FIFA 09; matches from which are already played 1.25 million times a day, we're told.

Head over to our FIFA 09 Ultimate Team mode gallery to see what this all looks like.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (18) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • awb83 #1 3 years ago

    PES RULEZ


    1st comment

  • stuarty_2003 #2 3 years ago

    And the Gallery doesn't work.

    Damn!

  • patchbox360 #3 3 years ago

    'PES RULEZ'

    thats what i use to think

  • brappbrap #4 3 years ago

    I don't get it...


    And PES ruled once upon a time, but the amount of people who now play FIFA instead is incredible.

    The only people I know who still think PES rules are the ones who are yet to play FIFA
    (and it's possible to swap the shoot and cross buttons around, so that's no excuse)

  • Munkey_Boy #5 3 years ago

    Link to Gallery doesn't work, but the pics are there if you search. Panini-tastic!

  • awb83 #6 3 years ago

    In all serious guys, I think FIFA 09 is superb. Credit has to go EA for the ay they have taken the franchise. I still enjoy PES.

    When you get down to playing a game of football I honestly think PES plays a better game but in terms of an overal package, then FIFA is so far ahead can't even see it.

    Check out my gamercard for proof I have FIFA - [link url=http://live.xbox. com/member/Allan83
    ]http://live.xbox. com/member/Allan83
    [/link]

    I have PES on PS3.

  • Raz76 #7 3 years ago

    They had this mode before, in Champions League 07/08. Was pretty fun. I don't know about paying for cards though...

  • jaangus #8 3 years ago

    the link to the gallery is broken!

    In my opinion fifa is now vastly superior to pro evo now and this is from a die hard pro evo fan

  • Monkey #9 3 years ago

    I'm a Pro Evo diehard, but this season EA got my cash for FIFA 09, switched the shoot and long pass buttons around and enjoying the new challenge.

  • paulf #10 3 years ago

    sounds like a virtual panini sticker book

  • Rdeal #11 3 years ago

    Read about this on gamespot,the price is going to be 1200 points on xbox,you earn gold coins when you win and you buy packs with those coins or if you want you can buy packs with MS points but you don't need to

  • ozallez #12 3 years ago

    would rather see EA get to work on a new manager mode... an add-on that i'd actually pay for

  • Harmonica #13 3 years ago

    Fair play to EA, this will get me playing FIFA again, at least for a while, just to see how it works out. But as for paying for virtual cards in a virtual card deck, I couldn't be less interested if I tried.

    ozallez: EA have already made a football manager game, it's called EA FIFA MANAGER (09 being the latest), on the PC. It's a worthy adversy to Sports Interactive's Football Manager, if not quite as good just yet.

  • gaselite #14 3 years ago

    Top stuff. Great work EA. Keep it up.

  • Rodafowa #15 3 years ago

    I'd rather they'd spent their time fixing the bug in Be A Pro mode that causes your team's players to disappear from the matchday squad selection, to be honest.

    At the end of my season in Milan, I was playing with two reserve strikers and seven defenders since Ronaldinho, Kaka, Pirlo, Antonini, Ambrosini, Emerson and Gattuso had all inexplicably gone walkabout.

  • BM #16 3 years ago

    It'd be nice if they'd fix the offline 2 player mode with the Live Seasons turned on, as soon as player 2 tries to move Fifa freezes...

    But it is better than PES I'm afraid to say; PES2009 just has too much wrong with it whereas Fifa 09 doesn't.

  • gblegend #17 3 years ago

    @ Rodafowa

    Its because they don't come back after serving a suspension but I think if you sim a game they will all reappear.

  • robdice #18 3 years ago

    wow fifa jus keeps getting better and better gotta make some patches tho i think if its gonna get really better
    Edited by 1 at 05/03/09 @ 01:39