The only nice part about fevers is lying on the couch, wrapped in a warm blanket, and playing videogames all afternoon. I'm pretty lethargic right now, so I progressed greatly through my Madden NFL 2005 franchise season. Tommy Maddox is out for the season and Ben Roethlisberger has been filling in nicely, despite his name being spelled incorrectly (-bergr). One of the greatly-touted new features, the Tony Bruno radio show, is a mixed-blessing. It's surprisingly smooth; doesn't really appear to be a mesh of generic phrases slapped together. However, it follows a strict format and it can take quite a while to get to the juicy parts that are pertinent to your team. Now if EA can only update the Madden/Michaels dialogue; they're still reusing most of everything from the 2003 version.

	EA, MS Announce FIFA Interactive World Cup Electronic Arts and Microsoft have announced the FIFA Interactive World Cup, a series of tournaments combining online and offline soccer action featuring FIFA Football 2005 on Xbox and Xbox Live. The tournament will make stops in the six inhabited continents, giving gamers the chance to compete for prizes as well as learn real-life soccer skills and meet celebrities. The tour will run from October to December with the finals being played in Zurich.
	Madden 2005 Has Its Strongest Launch Yet Electronics Arts looked at some numbers from their internal data and announced that Madden NFL 2005 has sold 1.35 million copies within its first week of release. It is the most successful launch ever for the series, dating back fifteen years. EA also enjoyed great success recently with its NCAA Football 2005, also having its strongest showing ever.
	Nielsen Looking Into Tracking Game-Data Famed television and movie data-tracking company, Nielsen, is looking into expanding its services to the game sales arena. To do so, it would go head-to-head with current stat-tracker the NPD Group, who has a monopoly on the sector. Michael Dowling, general manager of Nielsen Interactive Entertainment, told Reuters, "We're looking at this opportunity...I would say, pretty aggressively."
	DDR Extreme Song List Konami unveiled a partial song list of its upcoming Dance Dance Revolution Extreme. It'll sport licensed music from Duran Duran, Village People, and Pet Shop Boys, among others. DDR Extreme will have over 65 songs, the most for a home DDR version. The reason they only released a partial list is to hide the songs you unlock as you play the game.
	Square Enix's Dawn of Souls Revealed If you recall, there's been much commotion lately about a few trademarks made by Square Enix. RPGFan has found the use for the first trademark, Dawn of Souls; it will be the sub-title for the already released in Japan Final Fantasy I & II GBA compilation. In Europe (and presumably the US), the GBA game will be titled Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls. Thanks amankhan.
	Two New Games for N-Gage Nokia announced today two new titles for its N-Gage games library; Catan and Asphalt: Urban GT. Currently being developed by Capcom, Catan is a game where players build a massive civilization on the island Catan, trying to prevent other civilizations from developing around you. Asphalt: Urban GT is a racing title with tracks from around the globe. Both titles will use the N-Gage's Bluetooth functionality to allow for up to four-person multiplayer action.
	Bigbig Studios Hints at First PSP Title In an update in the Coming Soon section of their site, Bigbig Studios gives the first details about their first PSP project. They say they're working on an "original franchise" that is a "character and driving based arcade game. The innovative title features unique combat and high octane action." GameGossip snooped around the USPTO website and noticed that Evolution Studios, parent company to Bigbig, has filed for the name "Drive Club" not long ago.
	Tecmo Bowl Coming Back to Your TV Jakks Pacific has announced plans to release a new plug-n-play unit featuring five Tecmo classics, with Tecmo Bowl highlighting the bunch. The device is a controller that has a video and audio cable that you can plug into almost any TV and immediately play some classic games. The Tecmo Bowl TV Games unit will also have Tecmo Basketball, Mighty Bombjack, Fire-n-Ice, and Solomon's Key. It will retail for approximately $20.
	Misc. Q&As/Features TeamXbox speaks with a couple of guys at Microsoft Game Studios about Forza Motorsport. GameSpot speaks with Scott Langteau of Spark Unlimited about Call of Duty: Finest Hour.
	Misc. Media/Previews
	RPGFan kicks us off with two previews: Digital Devil Saga and Phantom Brave. EuroGamer has hands-on impressions of Sly 2: Band of Thieves. 1up tells us the ten things we need to know about Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. GameSpot gives us new details on EyeToy: Play 2. GameSpy shows off more of the skinfest that is Rumble Roses.
	GamerFeed previews Ultra Bust-A-Move X. Wham! Gaming has impressions of the Xbox version of Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory.
	IGN delivers new shots of Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, video of WWE Day of Reckoning, and some art of Star Fox 2. GameSpy tells us everything they know about Resident Evil 4.
	We get the lowdown on Mario Pinball Land courtesy of GamerFeed. Planet GameCube has tons of screens for the GTA-ish Payback. GameCube-Europe has a few pictures of the innards of a Nintendo DS. GameSpy has GBA goodies tonight with media of It's Mr. Pants and Boktai 2.
	Game Informer has a preview and movies for Call of Duty: Finest Hour (PS2, Xbox). 1up has an updated look at Need for Speed Underground 2 (PS2, Xbox, GCN). IGN shares new media of NASCAR 2005 Chase for the Cup (PS2, Xbox, GCN), FIFA Soccer 2005 (PS2, Xbox, GCN), FlatOut (PS2, Xbox), and The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age (PS2, Xbox, GCN).