FIFA 10: Ultimate Team

A thousand things go into making a person and a lot of them aren't football.

EA has announced that FIFA Ultimate Team will come on the FIFA 12 disc on 29th September.

Virtual trading card game FIFA Ultimate Team has so far generated a whopping £28.5 million for EA.

FIFA 09's Ultimate Team downloadable expansion was something of a surprise hit last year. According to EA, downloads numbered in six figures and there were reportedly around 35 million in-game card packs purchased, either with real money or in-game coins earned by playing the mode. This means that not only did those hundreds of thousands of players invest £7.99 in Ultimate Team, but a large portion of them either sunk a ton of playing time into it or opened their wallets and spent.

Once these figures came in, it was a pretty safe bet that FIFA 10 would include an Ultimate Team mode - and, now that it's finally here, it's likely to be an ever bigger success than last year's DLC. Why? Firstly, it offers a far faster, deeper and altogether better package than the FIFA 09 equivalent. Secondly, it's being sold at the cheaper price of £3.99 (or 400 Microsoft Points).

If you're new to the concept of the Ultimate Team mode, then imagine the FIFA manager mode played as a hybrid of FIFA, speed chess and top trumps. Players start the game with a randomly selected set of playing cards which include players, a stadium and handy items such as player contracts, training cards and staff cards. They then select a squad and a formation and can begin to build their teams.

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There's a mountain of new content on the PlayStation Store today, and the biggest new arrival is a demo for God of War III.

EA has announced that a FIFA 10 version of its Ultimate Team downloadable add-on will launch in February 2010 on PS3 and Xbox 360.