EA Taps Weather Channel for Ultimate Realism
With game developers constantly pushing the boundaries of graphics technology, gamers tend to expect great lighting, detailed textures, and realistic character animation. But EA Sports has gone one step further, integrating graphical features with events that occur in the real world to make games like NCAA Football 10 and Madden NFL 10 not only graphically accurate, but physically relevant.
Due to their new partnership with The Weather Channel, games like Madden NFL 10 are synced to current weather conditions within the United States. The Weather Channel’s lead meteorologist, Tom Moore, was pleased to state the following:
“Tropical systems typically bring with them strong winds and heavy rain, so hurricanes on a path closer to a stadium would certainly affect gameplay, creating a wet field, wind gusts and more.”
This means that players who strive for extreme realism in their games are going to have a blast playing through the latest NFL installment. Though it’s easy to imagine some players will be annoyed if they feel the need to watch weather forecasts from a different state, just to stay on top of things. Derek Van Nostran, the director of marketing at The Weather Channel Interactive, explained how the system works.
“Our teams at The Weather Channel provide a data feed that allows EA to pull real-time weather for any location chosen as a venue within the game. We also provided historical data for the past three years so that the EA producers would be able to match realistic weather conditions at every venue for games played at any time of year.”
Weather conditions have a visual affect on the game, as well as a physical effect. Players’ uniforms will get dirtier if the stadium a player is using happens to be experiencing a rain storm, or if that particular stadium is experiencing extreme heat, their team will start to suffer from fatigue as the game continues.
But of course, this weather syncing depends on weather or not you have a broadband connection to your game console. Does this feature interest you, or do you see it as a possible annoyance? Let us know in the comment section below!
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10 Responses to “EA Taps Weather Channel for Ultimate Realism”
I think that would be a nice idea.
that actually sounds pretty cool
The hurricane thing seems really awesome
Was this not in last year’s Madden, because I’m almost positive it was in NCAA FB 09.
Its pretty cool feature when u think about it, but u really forget all about after a while. I look at it this way though, its one of those “little things” that more people should appreciate but don’t. Obviously this feature isn’t going to make or break the game, but you have to appreciate it because of the effort to provide that little extra.
With that said commence your Madden hate in 3….2…1….
Oh, and I believe you do have the option to disable this.
Sounds pretty cool actually. I’ll give them credit for trying to come up with creative ways to add something new to the game. Maybe I’ll actually buy one of these football games one of these years
That’s so cool. I just wish I liked sports games.
They are trying to think of anything that can be added to the football gaming experience. I think it’s a good idea.
I love details like that, I’d like to see that in RPG’s or MMO’s somehow.
Could be a great addition to racing games, as well.
Pretty cool stuff there EA