EA Sports GameShow First Look

How deep is your sports trivia knowledge? Does it go back to the burgeoning days of your favorite sport, back when television was a rumor and your athletic hero wasn't even born? How about the past few decades? Or even last night? Regardless of the depth or breadth of your trivia knowledge, the upcoming EA Sports GameShow will likely have you covered. The game, which was introduced on stage today by newly installed EA Sports president Peter Moore, will be a free downloadable game for your PC and will be hosted with daily content when it's released later this fall.

During the demo, Moore copresented the game with San Francisco 49ers quarterback Alex Smith. The game is playable for up to six players at a time online, with questions provided by a live host/DJ who will bring new questions and content to each game session on a daily basis. Based on the demo we saw, it looks like you'll have some control over how your avatar appears (For example, Moore's online character had a full head of hair, in contrast to Moore's mostly slick cranium).

The canned trivia questions in the demo were all multiple choice in nature, utilizing text and audio from the host, as well as some streaming video. For example, one question asked the player to guess the nickname of Kansas City Chiefs kick/punt returner Dante Hall, after showing a video-highlight reel of Hall pulling off the kind of sick moves on the gridiron that earned him the nickname "The Human Joystick" in the first place. Proving that the game will be able to use up-to-the-minute content, another question asked who got the win in Tuesday night's Boston Red Sox/Toronto Blue Jays game (answer: Josh Beckett, the first MLB player to reach 17 wins on the season).

With performance tracking, leaderboards, and daily content, EA Sports GameShow looks like it's going to be an interesting expansion of the EA Sports publishing brand. At the very least, it will be a fun way to kill some time at your PC. The game is due for release as a free download later this year.