Talking FIFA 08 mobile with EA's Adrian Blunt

When it comes to mobile footie action, 2007 marks a titanic three-way clash between Gameloft's Real Football 2008, Konami's exciting new entrant Pro Evolution 2008 and EA's FIFA 08. So having heard the pre-match views of Gameloft's Nicolas Rodeghiero and Konami's Axel de Rougé, it was only fair to get FIFA 08 producer Adrian Blunt's take on EA's refreshed game.

Adrian Blunt: There are five European leagues available - the Premiership, Serie A, Ligue 1 Orange, Bundesliga and La Liga as well as a collection of international teams from around the world. In total there are over 100 authentic licensed teams that players can choose from.

We also have access to the same database that the FIFA 08 console game uses, which gives us an incredible amount of information about player statistics and abilities as well as team information. We've managed to transfer player statistics to FIFA 08 mobile so each player is an individual.

Gamers get the option to play through a half season in one of the leagues with a team of their choice. We felt the game had to make sense on the mobile platform while still feeling like a bona fide FIFA game, so we decided a full season of 38+ games might be too much.

As well as Season mode, gamers can take their chosen team through the Club Challenge mode, tackling a series of gripping scenarios culminating in a match to win the title. Or if they simply fancy a quick match, they can pick any two teams from any of the leagues for a one-off friendly, and there's a tutorial that will help you get started quickly.

If a player is injured in a match it will carry over into the next match and maybe even into future matches. If a player accumulates yellow cards or gets a straight red, then he will be suspended. Fatigue will also carry over into the next match, so your entire squad becomes important to you. On top of that, the commentator will recognise how well you are doing throughout the season and know when those crunch matches or local derbys come up.

In addition to game commentary from Andy Gray and the Club Challenge mode, we've spent a lot of time ensuring every player has individual statistics. You'll find Wayne Rooney has a great shooting attribute and Ronaldinho has great speed and passing ability. We've also included what we call in-form players. Randomly before each match, up to three players will be marked as in-form, which means they will have heightened abilities for that match only. Defenders are less likely to get booked for slide tackles, passes from midfielders are less likely to get intercepted or go astray and strikers will have increased shooting accuracy. We have added a visual effect to these players, too, to highlight their skills.

We've added a sprint key for an extra burst of speed but users should be careful not to overuse this feature as we have added fatigue as well. Use it too much and you may need to look to your substitute's bench late in the game. Players will now do an automatic standing block tackle as well as a sliding tackle. And we have added the offside rule for the first time.

Yes, with an increasing number of handsets that cater for a landscape mode, it felt natural to integrate this capability into the game, meaning you can turn your phone on its side and play with a widescreen. In conjunction, we've added more pitch textures and improved the stadium and crowd as well as allowing the user to customise the position of the radar.

We work hard to provide similar experiences no matter what handset it's played on, but there are natural limits within some handsets we have to try to work around without losing any of the FIFA 08 experience.

On lower-end handsets users can only choose from international teams in a tournament or friendly match and don't have access to the Club Challenge or Season mode. You'll also find the in-form system primarily on higher end handsets. On some of the mid-end handsets we've had to reduce or remove small details like varying pitch textures, sound effects and music - but overall, I don't think people will be disappointed with their FIFA 08 experience no matter which handset they own

FIFA 08 mobile is released on September 27th.