It’s been a busy few weeks, but we’re excited for another big launch week here with NCAA Football hitting stores tomorrow.

We’ve talked a lot lately about our products as live services, with new content and ongoing support after launch… NCAA Football is a great example of how that live support is quickly evolving to mean functionality both post and pre ship.  Consider this - we announced TeamBuilder, the new create-a-school online feature, last month at E3 as something that would allow fans to create content for NCAA Football 10 before the game had even shipped.  Now six weeks later, more than 160,000 teams have been created online and can be imported into the game beginning tomorrow.  I’ve got to admit - that’s an eye-popping number.

I was excited to see the first NCAA Football review hit today, where TeamXbox calls it “the best football game I have ever played on an Xbox” in giving it a 93. Heady praise indeed, and having seen the final build last week in Tiburon, I think you will be in agreement that the development has once again captured the passion, commitment and excitement of college football.

More news and notes from the weekend:

• I find myself playing the beta of Tiger Online every opportunity that I get recently. The concept of playing Tiger straight from my web browser, and to be swinging the club 20 seconds after opening the site, is a blast. We are closing in on an open beta, and I will post a link to that as soon as the team is ready to scale.

• The news on Saturday of the death of former world champion boxer Arturo Gatti hit me particularly hard. He was a great friend of EA SPORTS, appearing in each of the last two editions of Fight Night, and as all boxing fans know, he had the heart of a lion in the ring. I had the pleasure of meeting him in Miami three years ago, and he spent a couple of hours with my daughter and I regaling us with stories of his upbringing, his pre-fight regimen, and fascinating anecdotes of his great fights against Micky Ward. You were a champion in and out of the ring, Arturo, and will be sorely missed by those of us here at EA SPORTS who had the honor and privilege of working with you over the years.

• Fk915 - yes I know the Ashes have started, and while it is impossible to watch the action over here in the US, I do follow the matches via BBC.com or Cricinfo.com. While England opened brightly on the first day, they ended up having to heroically hang on for the draw at the end. It seemed that the wicket was a bowlers nightmare at first, and while if I were the Aussie captain I might have declared an hour or two earlier, it came right down to the last wicket and what was undoubtedly a thrilling and nail biting last few overs.

• Fight Night Round 4 continues to garner critical acclaim, with scores that put it in the top 6 percent all time for all games on the PS3 and Xbox 360. For those of you that requested the option of the button controls, I am sure you saw our announcement last week that a download enabling this would be available by September. Having played a couple of hours over the weekend with my son alternating playing as Muhammad Ali and keeping Iron Mike Tyson at arm’s length, I am a confirmed sticks guy at this point, but I also recognize many of you want the option of the buttons as well. The development team is working on this, and we’ll get this to you as soon as we can…

• I also saw the first playable of EA SPORTS MMA while at Tiburon last week. We have a team of incredibly hardcore fans of the sport working hard and making excellent progress, and we look forward to delivering a title in 2010 that we believe will provide further focus and attention to the sport.

I know there has been some recent discussion about EA SPORTS bringing a challenger to this sport.  I love mixed martial arts, and we’ve been working on a game concept since I came to EA two years ago. I have great respect for the  organizations and individuals that have invested in the sport’s growth over the past decade - so this is one that is near and dear to me and I’m excited to see such good progress to date.  I trace my MMA video game roots back to my support of Crave’s UFC title on the Dreamcast in 2000, and have been a fan ever since. Our title will bring both innovation and further authenticity to mixed martial arts, not to mention a strong global publishing network that will help spread the sport’s popularity around the world.

Finally, wish I could have been in Vancouver today for our big fall preview event.  Media and community were joined by such stars as Venus Williams, Dwight Howard (Orlando Magic), Milan Lucic (Boston Bruins) and Sacha Kljestan (Chivas USA) for previews of NBA LIVE 10, FIFA 10, NHL 10 and Grand Slam Tennis. Our EASPORTS.com team was there to bring you everything from the event.