By Mark Baber
April 17 – This week has seen the launch of the Panini Online Sticker Album for the 2014 FIFA World Cup hosted on FIFA.com in association with presenting partner Coca-Cola, and the roll-out of the official video game for the 2014 FIFA World Cup, published by EA Sports for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
In 2006, Panini partnered with Coca-Cola and Tokenzone to produce the first Virtual Sticker Album for the FIFA World Cup. This week’s launch follows the successful launch through the FIFA.com platform in 2010 which attracted 1.4 million users, a third of whom completed their collections.
The 2014 edition of the virtual album will give users the opportunity to collect 11 players from each of the 32 participating teams as well as an additional 40 non-player stickers including the official mascot, official match ball the FIFA World Cup Trophy and federation logos, with prizes available
For the first time this edition of the Panini Online Sticker album will be available as a smart phone and tablet App for both IOS and Android.
The 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil game is being released in Europe and Australia today, following Tuesday’s launch in North America and ahead of next week’s launch in Japan.
The game is available only for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, due to low rates of adoption of the more advanced PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in crucial markets such as Brazil.
Gameplay improvements from FIFA 14 include dribbling, an increased accuracy in passing and first-touch mechanics. For the first time this edition allows full qualification rounds from all Confederations to be played. It also provides improved fan celebrations and cut-ins to live shots from different locations around the world to show fans celebrating goals in locations such as Trafalgar Square, Sydney’s Opera House, the Congress Building in Buenos Aires, Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Stradun in Dubrovnik, Croatia and the Plaza de la Constitución in Mexico City.
Also notable is the soundtrack for the game which features Brazilian music and the EA Sports Talk Radio.
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