As you many of you have already guessed, there is a new ratings spread in NCAA Football 11. You'll no longer see dozens of players at 99 OVR in this year's game when looking at the rosters we ship with. Hence, we had to ensure the new Prospects created in Dynasty Mode matched the new philosophy. The Prospects have been re-created... every single one of them. The reason being is we wanted to ensure that all positions in the game had its share of elite players, multiple types of players, and an even spread from top to bottom.

We are now less than two months away from the July 13th release of NCAA Football 11. Personally, I'm very excited about all the details we already talked about with game play and presentation. The game is looking really good right now and the team is working hard to finish in these last couple months.

So, we have made some very dramatic changes to the way the offensive linemen select their blocking targets. Last year you might see some plays where defensive linemen lined up at the point of attack would sometimes be left unblocked. This year those defenders not only get blocked but they are often double teamed by run blockers. This has improved the effectiveness of run plays exponentially. In NCAA Football 11 you’re going to find shotgun runs to be more effective than they have ever been in any of our games. In college football shotgun running is a huge part of many teams high powered offense. You have to be able to mix it up, whether that means throwing in a Read Option, HB Sweep, Jet Sweep, HB Draw, Wild Cat, etc. That is where a lot of our focus has been for NCAA Football 11.

Fixing play call was not an easy thing to do. It's easily one of the most used screens in the game and everyone wants something different from it. Changing such a major part of the game is a scary thing to do. Every football game since football games have been around has done pretty much the same thing. The play call screen pops up, you flip through the plays, pick a play, and then you run the play you picked. Calling plays like this is the standard. I was extremely nervous to mess with the formula, but the fact is, the way you have been calling plays in Madden NFL for 20+ years is actually not authentic to the way coaches do it.

If you try to make an extreme turn, your player will play a direction change that will dynamically update to match changes in desired movement direction. For instance, if you start a 180 degree direction change, but then change your mind in the middle, you can branch out. If you decide halfway through that you need to adjust where you want to run just a little bit, the animation will compensate and make sure you exit in the direction you are pressing on the stick. Direction changes have always been a tough balance between look and responsiveness, but our newtech has made it easier for us to improve both the look and feel of direction changes.

"We're already seeing this come into play while we're testing the game," adds Burnsides. "You'll see a linebacker shoot into the backfield and you wonder how he got in there, he's not that fast. But now you look and realize he's got 95 acceleration. He's going to make plays over short distances, and that changes everything you know about playing the game."