WITH THE TOP DRAFT PICK, EA SPORTS SELECTS WR LARRY
FITZGERALD
FOR NCAA FOOTBALL 2005 COVER
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. – April 20, 2004 – Electronic Arts
(NASDAQ: ERTS) announced today that former University of Pittsburgh Panthers
wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald will appear on the cover of the newest iteration
of EA SPORTS™ best-selling college football franchise, NCAA®
Football 2005. Fitzgerald is entering the NFL after two record-breaking
seasons at University of Pittsburgh and his image will appear on all of the
game’s packaging and merchandising. NCAA Football 2004 sold 1.6
million copies last year and is the second best-selling football videogame
behind only EA’s Madden NFL 2004.
“It’s a huge honor to represent NCAA Football 2005,
since this is the game my teammates and I always competed on in the dorms,” said
Fitzgerald. “To grace the cover of the most intense and exciting college
football videogame is a dream come true for me. I am fired up to be part of the
EA SPORTS family.”
Fitzgerald was named the winner of
the Walter Camp Player of the Year Award, becoming the first sophomore to earn
that prestigious honor. He also won the Biletnikoff Award as the country’s top
receiver and was named a unanimous All-American, finishing a close second to
Oklahoma quarterback Jason White in the Heisman Trophy balloting. This past
season Fitzgerald set three NCAA receiving records and tied another, including
consecutive games with a touchdown catch (18), touchdown catches as a freshman
and sophomore (34), receiving yards as a sophomore (1,672), and most games
catching a TD pass in a season (tying Marshall’s Randy Moss with 12). In just
two, years he set eight Big East receiving records: single-season receiving
yards (1,672), single-season receptions (92), single-season TD catches (22),
career TD catches (34), career 1,000-yard receiving seasons (two), career
100-yard receiving games (14), single-season 100-yard receiving games (10), and
catches per game (7.1 avg.).
NCAA Football 2005 is all about home field advantage
this season, where, for the first time in football videogames, gameday
atmosphere directly impacts players’ on field performances. With the new
match-up stick you can track the crowd’s impact on your players to see if they
can withstand the pressure and find key personnel mismatches. NCAA Football
2005 is scheduled to ship in July on the PlayStation®2 computer
entertainment system, the Xbox ® video game system from Microsoft,
and the Nintendo GameCube™. The game’s official website is
www.ncaafootball05.com.
EA SPORTS is the leading interactive sports software brand in
the world. Its top-selling titles and franchises include Madden NFL™
Football, FIFA Soccer, NHL® hockey, NBA LIVE
basketball, MVP Baseball™, NCAA® Football,
and NASCAR Thunder™. The EA SPORTS home page is
www.easports.com.
ABOUT ELECTRONIC ARTS
Electronic Arts (EA),
headquartered in Redwood City, California, is the world’s leading interactive
entertainment software company. Founded in 1982, Electronic Arts posted revenues
of $2.5 billion for fiscal 2003. The company
develops, publishes, and distributes interactive software worldwide for video
game systems, personal computers and the Internet. Electronic Arts
markets its products under three brand names: EA SPORTS™, EA GAMES™,
and EA SPORTS BIG™. EA’s homepage and online game site is
www.ea.com.
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Electronic Arts, EA SPORTS, EA SPORTS BIG, EA GAMES, and MVP
Baseball are trademarks or registered trademarks of Electronic Arts Inc. in the
U.S. and/or other countries. All names, logos, team icons, and mascots
associated with the NCAA, universities, bowls and conferences are the exclusive
properties of the respective institutions. NCAA is a registered trademark of
National Collegiate Athletic Associations. NBA, NFL, NASCAR, NHL and FIFA are
trademarks of their respective owners and used with permission. PlayStation is a
registered trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. Nintendo GameCube is a
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