The gameplay sliders have been completely retouched so that each extreme setting (min/max) produces wildly different results – another huge plus in my book. If you make the scale of a slider set like this it’s much easier to find the precise settings you want. We’ll have to see how that shakes out but it does sound promising.

Franchise mode has received ample attention this year and this was the first time I have heard a developer say that more and more people are using franchise mode. Who knew? (There’s also a Create a Team feature, finally)

In addition, one of the slickest new features that stood out from the call is the ability to play any franchise game online --- even an offline franchise game. You can call up a buddy and play a Jackets/Wings game in your personal franchise and play that game online. Pretty nifty. And if you really want to go hardcore you can live-blog your franchise, basically writing up session reports.

Also in regards to franchise mode, the teams will, hopefully, play more to their real life tendency – that means no more constant net crashing and since the team reworked the ratings for the players you should see stars stand out a bit more. Again we just have to wait and see.

There’s new stuff for the Wii and it supports WiiMotion Plus, there’s a new Super Skills competition which the producers all seem to really enjoy, the player models are all new and the team sounds very happy with its overall presentation…and the game is also coming out on PS2 – but most people will like to the new $49.99 price tag more than anything. Will that be enough to entice people away from EA’s NHL franchise? We’ll see. Both games drop on September 15th and we’ll have full reviews of both as soon as possible.

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