Well, some good news to report. As you can see in this thread, over on the official EA FIFA next-gen forums, a free DLC commentary patch is on the way. Hurrah!

Cue much rejoicing from FIFA fans apart from a distinct bunch of nerds at the back wearing “when will you fix Manager Mode” t-shirts (now available for £12.99 from FIFASoccerBlog – just kidding, our legal department advises us that it’s not a good idea).

Basically, a squad file is on the way that will fix the broken tactics in the game (e.g. all English teams below the Premier League having the exact same all-70s tactics), as well as updating some of the existing tactics to make teams play a more realistic game of football based on all of the community feedback.

It will most likely be arriving over the next few weeks, but it will fix nothing else.

As always, hit the forums and let us know your thoughts on this podcast’s topic in the podcast thread – and remember you can download our podcasts via iTunes using the keyword FIFA SOCCER BLOG!

If you haven’t seen the fixlist, read the article a few stops below – or click here.

The tactics bug where the English Championship, League 1 and League 2 teams – plus the three promoted Premier League sides, as well as all teams from countries such as Australia, Brazil, Republic of Ireland and Scotland, and a few from the Rest of World category – have all 70s set as their tactics, has not yet been resolved.

But, we’ve been told a fix for this is on the way!

Xbox 360 users will have the patch tomorrow morning between 9am and 11am.

Let us know what your experience of the patch is on our forums!

To see all the details, click the read more button below.

FIFA 10 Game Update (360/PS3) – The Details

As always a big factor in the success of the FIFA franchise is the involvement of its massive community of fans and this year is no different. The FIFA development team actively sought out feedback and opinion from the community during the development of the game, and now it’s in people’s hands that activity hasn’t slowed down.

Responding to post-launch feedback from the community during the last two weeks, a new downloadable game update is being readied for both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. What follows are details of exactly what changes you can expect on installing the update.

Many thanks to everyone for their feedback to help us improve your experience of FIFA 10.

(Producer, David Rutter)

Online and Connectivity

PlayStation 3
Feedback: Players disconnected from PS3 matches too frequently in the development teams opinion, usually during the first half with a connection-lost message.
Update: Players will be able to complete online games with minimal disconnections.
PlayStation 3
Feedback: Players disconnected too frequently in the development teams opinion, from the PlayStation Network when playing online with a profile with many FIFA friends.
Update: Players will not see any unexpected behaviour relating to having many friends on their profile.
Xbox 360 / PlayStation 3
Feedback: No teams in Div 3 or below on world standings
Update: All Divisions will have stats listed once there are enough teams to fill the divisions above them (50 teams per division, so Division 3 should start having stats listed once there are 101 teams in the standings).
Xbox 360
Feedback: Occasionally, no users could be found during a Pro Ranked match search, while there were users available to play.
Update: Pro Ranked match search will always be successful when there are users available to play.

Manager Mode

Xbox 360 / PlayStation 3
Feedback: Player form changed too dramatically while playing through manager mode.
Update: A player’s form is now more subtle and does not affect physical attributes.
Xbox 360 / PlayStation 3
Feedback: Occasionally loaned players from the first transfer window would be sold by teams in the second transfer window.
Update: AI teams with players loaned to them will not sell these players in the second transfer window.
Xbox 360 / PlayStation 3
Feedback: Occasionally players would disappear that were bought in the first transfer window when simming matches in the second transfer window.
Update: The players team will not lose players during the second transfer window without any action on the user’s part.
Xbox 360 / PlayStation 3
Feedback: Goalkeeper clean sheets were being tracked as assists in the Top 20’s screen.
Update: Assists will only be awarded to players that passed the ball to the goal scorer immediately before the goal was scored.
Xbox 360 / PlayStation 3
Feedback: The game occasionally crashed when entering gameplay, team management, or transfer lists during the first season after loaning out players and filling the roster to full. There were too many players at the club.
Update: Loaned players will now still count towards one of the 42 roster spots so the player cannot have more players than the maximum belonging to their team.
Xbox 360 / PlayStation 3
Feedback: Rarely, the player could progress past the end of season with a negative club budget after signing and, later, choosing not to re-sign players during a season.
Update: Choosing not to re-sign players will not cause the team’s budget to decrease further.

Live Season 2.0

Xbox 360 / PlayStation 3
Feedback: Changing the squad at the central hub of My Live Seasons to include invalid players would make the game hang if substitutions were later attempted during gameplay.”
Update: The player will be informed that the player cannot be substituted into the lineup.
Xbox 360 / PlayStation 3
Feedback: Too many match events, for example yellow cards, were being tracked incorrectly which would occasionally make My Live Seasons hang.
Update: The user will be able to use Live Season mode without any hangs, and all match events will be tracked correctly.
Xbox 360 / PlayStation 3
Feedback: Youth players were shown with incorrect ages.
Update: The Youth Players’ ages will be correct.

Statistics

Xbox 360
Feedback: Some ranked Head-to-Head matches did not update on some leaderboards.
Update: All ranked matches are now tracked correctly on the leaderboards.
Xbox 360 / PlayStation 3
Feedback: Stats did not track correctly if players turned off their console during a Clubs match.
Update: A player quitting / disconnecting from a game after five minutes of game time have elapsed will always be assigned a DNF and Loss.
Xbox 360 / PlayStation 3
Feedback: After a completing Clubs game online, Last Match stats were not updating correctly.
Update: All match stats are updating correctly.
PlayStation 3
Feedback: FIFA Interactive World Cup stats and points were not always reporting correctly
Update: FIFA Interactive World Cup stats and points are now being reported correctly.
Xbox 360 / PlayStation 3
Feedback: Regional league stats were being reset too frequently.
Update: Regional league stats will now be reset on a monthly basis.

Gameplay

Xbox 360 / PlayStation 3
Feedback: Players teammate AI in online Clubs games was not equivalent to World Class AI.
Update: Teammate AI while playing in clubs is now World Class.

Friends Leagues

Xbox 360 / PlayStation 3
Feedback: One User’s team becomes invisible after following a set of specific, unusual invitation steps.
Update: Both teams will be visible during gameplay.

EA SPORTS has told Eurogamer that a large number of the problems reported with FIFA 10 on the official forums have been addressed or will be addressed by a new patch, which should be out this week.

For more details, read the full article over here.

Yep – there will be an update to the game.
Yep – it will address some stuff raised here on the forums in manager mode.
Nope – I can’t tell you when it will be released – but we’re hoping in the next few weeks latest.

By “some stuff raised here” I hope that’s a reference to this list of Manager Mode issues produced by yours truly. Stay tuned for more info as we get it!

Let us know what your experience of the patch is on our forums!

Producer David Rutter has announced – in an article that you can read if you click here – that there will be a patch available from day one of FIFA 10’s release (depending on how quickly the guys at Sony and Microsoft can get it through certification).

It’s great to know that EA are committed to keeping exploits and bugs out of the game. Hopefully this patch is just the first!