The Madden NFL 12 Super Bowl Halftime blog is online. Tuner sets and surprise onside kicks are in.
""Tuner Sets", introduced in the NHL series and brought into NCAA Football last year, are hugely important to the development of sports games in that they allow us to tune and tweak many existing parts of game code without the major delay that comes from a full title update requiring 1st party console manufacturer approvals. A quick addition to my hacked surprise onside kick code made this feature easily tunable post-ship, and thus much safer against any exploits that may crop up. This isn't the only thing in the tuner sets obviously...we are in the process of moving as many items into these as possible, from gameplay tuning to franchise data to even presentation aspects. We are excited to the possibilities this will open up to our fans in being able to provide live feedback and having us act on it in near real-time. The days of shipping a disc in a box and forgetting about it are long gone, and we want to be at the forefront of blazing new trails in reacting to our audience and improving the game quickly."
Read the entire blog right here, along with a short video showing off the new surprise onside kick, in action.
UPDATE: The podcast is now on iTunes, for those that couldn't listen to it, via the blog.
EDIT: Per Ian Cummings
"RE: surprise onside, you pick a normal kickoff, then hit the B (or Circle) button as the last press on the meter. Your opponent has no clue!"
UPDATE #2: Via Ian
"Since so many people have asked...surprise onside as of today is only allowed 2x per team per game. That value is also in the tuner set."
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