FIFA 14 is a 2013 sports association football simulation video game developed by EA Canada and published by Electronic Arts. It was released in late September 2013 for the PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable, PlayStation Vita, Xbox 360, Wii, Nintendo 3DS and Microsoft Windows. It was released as freemium, under the title FIFA 14 Mobile, for iOS and Android on September 23, 2013 and for Windows Phone 8 on February 28, 2014, although much of the game is inaccessible without an in-app payment. It was a launch title for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in November 2013 and is the last FIFA game to be released for the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable.
The game received primarily positive reviews across all systems.
The PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions of the game feature a new game engine called the Ignite Engine. This features both graphical and gameplay advances on the previous game engine used by the FIFA series, the Impact Engine (which is used for the, PlayStation 3, PC and Xbox 360 versions of the game). Improvements include advanced AI to make players react more like real human beings (such as becoming anxious towards the end of a game when their team needs to score), "True Player Motion" to create more realistic movement from the players, and more enhanced realism for environmental features such as weather and the crowd, which responds to what is happening on the pitch in a manner similar to a real crowd (such as lamenting a near miss). It was initially thought that the PC version of the game would also feature the Ignite Engine, but in May 2013, EA Sports confirmed this would not be the case.
FIFA 12 (titled FIFA Soccer 12 in North America) is the 19th game in Electronic Arts' FIFA series of association football video games. It was developed by EA Canada, and published by Electronic Arts worldwide under the EA Sports label. It was released in September 2011, on consoles for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii and PlayStation 2; on handhelds for PlayStation Portable, 3DS, Xperia Play and iOS; and on computers for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. A port of the game entitled FIFA Football (titled FIFA Soccer in North America) was released as a launch title for the PlayStation Vita.
David Rutter, the line producer for FIFA 12, promised "a revolutionary year for FIFA ... especially in the gameplay department."
In the United Kingdom, an "Ultimate Edition" of the game was available at Game and Gamestation stores. It included four monthly Ultimate Team gold packs, with each pack containing 12 items, including players, contracts, stadiums, managers, staff, fitness, healing, footballs, kits and badges. Each pack contains one rare item, such as enhanced player attributes, longer contracts and the most coveted players. On 22 June 2011, EA Sports announced that the Microsoft Windows version of FIFA 12 will have the same engine, features, and competitions as the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions. Unfortunately, night matches are not available in tournaments created by users, which was removed for a currently unsolved reason.
The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA /ˈfiːfə/; English:International Federation of Association Football) is the governing body of association football, futsal and beach football. FIFA is responsible for the organisation of football's major international tournaments, notably the World Cup which commenced in 1930 and the Women's World Cup which commenced in 1991.
FIFA was founded in 1904 to oversee international competition among the national associations of Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Headquartered in Zürich, its membership now comprises 209 national associations. Member countries must each also be members of one of the six regional confederations into which the world is divided: Africa, Asia, Europe, North & Central America and the Caribbean, Oceania and South America.
Although FIFA does not control the rules of football (that being the responsibility of the International Football Association Board), it is responsible for both the organization of a number of tournaments and their promotion, which generate revenue from sponsorship. In 2013 FIFA had revenues of over 1.3 billion U.S. dollars, for a net profit of 72 million, and had cash reserves of over 1.4 billion U.S. dollars.
The 2014 FIFA World Cup was the 20th FIFA World Cup, the quadrennial world championship for men's national football teams organized by FIFA. It took place in Brazil from 12 June to 13 July 2014, after the country was awarded the hosting rights in 2007. It was the second time that Brazil staged the competition (the first was in 1950), and the fifth time that it was held in South America.
Thirty-one national teams advanced through qualification competitions to join the host nation in the final tournament. A total of 64 matches were played in 12 venues located in as many host cities across Brazil. For the first time at a World Cup finals, match officials used goal-line technology, as well as vanishing foam for free kicks.FIFA Fan Fests in each host city gathered a total of 5 million people, and the country received 1 million visitors from 202 countries.
Every World Cup-winning team since the first edition in 1930 – Argentina, Brazil, England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Uruguay – qualified for this tournament. Spain, the title holders, were eliminated at the group stage, along with England and Italy. Uruguay were eliminated in the round of 16, and France exited in the quarter-finals. Brazil, who had won the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup, lost to Germany in the semi-finals and eventually finished in fourth place. In the final, Germany defeated Argentina 1–0 to win the tournament and secure the country's fourth world title, the first after the German reunification in 1990, when as West Germany they also beat Argentina in the World Cup final. Germany became the first European team to win a World Cup staged in the Americas, and this result marked the first time that sides from the same continent had won three consecutive tournaments (following Italy in 2006 and Spain in 2010).
The 2010 FIFA World Cup was the 19th FIFA World Cup, the world championship for men's national association football teams. It took place in South Africa from 11 June to 11 July 2010. The bidding process for hosting the tournament finals was open only to African nations; in 2004, the international football federation, FIFA, selected South Africa over Egypt and Morocco to become the first African nation to host the finals.
The matches were played in 10 stadiums in nine host cities around the country, with the final played at the Soccer City stadium in South Africa's largest city, Johannesburg. Thirty-two teams were selected for participation via a worldwide qualification tournament that began in August 2007. In the first round of the tournament finals, the teams competed in round-robin groups of four teams for points, with the top two teams in each group proceeding. These 16 teams advanced to the knockout stage, where three rounds of play decided which teams would participate in the final.
The 2003 successful motion picture Freaky Friday included a soundtrack which featured songs by various artists. The album was called a "mixed bag" by allmusic, which specifically cited American Hi-Fi's "The Art of Losing," The Donnas' "Backstage", Andrew W.K.'s "She Is Beautiful," and Joey Ramone's "What a Wonderful World" as good, and strongly criticized the rest of the album.
The album was certified Gold and sold over 650,000 to date. In 2004 British girl-band Girls Aloud recorded "You Freak Me Out" for the film and was intended to be added to the soundtrack, however it was decided not to add it to the album, but was included on the re-release of the band's debut album, Sound of the Underground (2004).
The Ultimate is a steel roller coaster at Lightwater Valley amusement park, near the small cathedral city of Ripon, in North Yorkshire, England. In 1991, it took the record of longest roller coaster in the world from The Beast at Kings Island. Following the release of Steel Dragon 2000, it became the second longest roller coaster in the world.
"The Ultimate" represented an investment of £5.2 million and was the concept of the park's original owner, Robert Staveley. Construction work began in early 1990 and took eighteen months to complete before the opening to the public on 17 July 1991.
While "The Ultimate" was designed by Big Country Motioneering, they were not involved with the completion of the project. Lightwater Valley's owner got engineers from British Rail to oversee the construction. A few sections of track on the second half of the ride were redesigned to change their banking. The track was made by "Tubular Engineering".
Set within 44 acres (178,000 m²) of woodland, "The Ultimate" takes passengers on a 7 minute 34 second ride along 7,442-foot (2.3 km) of tubular steel track (an average of 11.2 mph), with two lift hills of 102 and 107-foot respectively (140 when taking the full gradient into effect) which rest on Canadian redwood trestles. It currently runs two trains on a normal day, each of which can hold a maximum of 38 passengers.