EA’s Gamescom 2011 announcement of a FIFA Street return came as a pleasant surprise. Considering the problems EA has had relaunching NBA Jam, it was worth wondering if the arcade soccer redo would get a full retail release. EA has confirmed that it will, and has revealed a whole host of features. The new “Street Ball” control system has more in common with EA’s Need for Speed racing games than any previous sports effort. Your controller’s left and right triggers handle braking and speeding up. Players can combine these moves to fake out opponents, slamming to a stop and then taking off.

Even as the February 22 launch of the PlayStation Vita gradually comes closer, Sony wants to have something new available for the holiday season. That’s why it’s coming out with a new PSP Entertainment Pack starring Cars 2: The Video Game and FIFA Soccer 12. The bundle will be on sale November 15 for $159.99. That makes this bundle $10 less than the 3DS.

EA’s FIFA series has been garnering strong reviews and sales for a while now. FIFA 12′s first-week sales numbers have given the publisher reason to run around shouting “GOO- A-LLL” at obnoxious volumes. The soccer sim is now the fastest selling sports game in history, selling 3.2 million copies in its first week on shelves. That makes it the best selling game of 2011 so far, eclipsing even Gears of War 3. FIFA 12 for the iPhone and iPad has sold 879,000 units already.

A few more Wii games just got a lot cheaper. Nintendo’s recently decided to start having a line of greatest hits Wii games. Ones that only cost $19.99, as opposed to the normal Nintendo pricing of $49.99. On May 15, 2011 we received our first round of Nintendo Selects Wii games, and now two months later on August 16, 2011, we’ve received the second batch…

What’s another way to monetize games besides selling downloadable content? With a subscription plan of course. EA Sports today rolled out its EA Sports Season Ticket for $24.99 a year. EA Sports Season Ticket is a premium service that gives players of five EA Sports titles the ability to play the games for three days before they are released at retail.

EA Sports President Peter Moore was on hand at E3 2011, of course. He reminded us that soccer – or football to the rest of he word – is “the world’s game.” EA wants FIFA 12 to be the world’s soccer game. EA Sports is touting three game improvements as “revolutionary innovations.”

First is tactical defending. Your positioning, tactics and timing are all important components to making the right defensive play. Mess up on any one of those three, and you could end up on the front page of the sports section for the wrong reason.

While sports games may not be exciting for everyone, they’re a necessity for a successful game system. The 3DS will be ready for fans from the start, thanks to Konami and Pro Evolution Soccer 2011 3D. It’ll be released in Spring 2011, in time to be part of the 3DS launch window. Which is fitting, since it also happens to be a Japanese 3DS launch title…

Electronic Arts will be conducting a massive purge on a wide number of older games. You’ll still be able to purchase them somewhere, but their online components will be shut down. EA is doing this so that it can use more resources to support recent games. I mean, are you really still playing NCAA Football 07 anyway?

The first Inazuma Eleven English DS game has a release date. Unfortunately, it isn’t a North American release date. Nintendo is going to be bringing Level-5′s soccer RPG to Norway and Europe on January 28, 2011. It will also be released in the United Kingdom after the Inazuma Eleven anime launch…

It’s getting to the point where pre-Black Friday sales are just as good as the actual Black Friday sales. We’ve got information on a sale Target is having from November 21-24, 2010. Some of these discounts are so good, you can probably skip Black Friday visits altogether. Don’t take my word for it. Keep reading to see if Target will have something on sale that you can cross off you gift list.