EA seems to want to make it clear that the announcement of Madden 09's official soundtrack is an event, and music boss Steve Schnur told Kotaku about a few more promotions to drive the point home: First, Target's pre-order bonus for the game will be an iTunes card that lets you download ten of the soundtrack songs free. Second, an artist from the soundtrack will be playing nightly on the Jimmy Kimmel Show beginning August 4th, and third, both past and current Madden artists will play at the first-ever "Maddenpalooza," an all-day music and gaming event in conjunction with the Rose Bowl in Pasadena on August 11th.

We were curious: why is this massive music promotion for Madden such a huge deal to EA? It seems perplexing at first to see a publisher throw so much muscle behind a soundtrack. But it turns out there's a rather sensible motivation behind it that seems to be a win-win for EA, music artists, and for the gaming audience (or would that be a win-win-win?)

Hit the jump for Kotaku's full interview with Schnur:

EA has revealed the soundtrack listing for Madden NFL 09, the most important series in the history of video game soundtracks. Is that right? Did Madden usher in a new age of music in video games? EA's Worldwide Executive of Music and Marketing Steve Schnur seems to think so.

"Madden NFL revolutionised the industry by making music of multiple genres - from both established acts and brand-new artists - an essential emotional component of the videogame experience and the NFL season itself... Not only have we changed the gaming culture forever, we continue to move the needle musically for millions of people around the world. Madden NFL will always be recognised as the game that made the music matter in videogames."

So what's on this most important of soundtracks? Disturbed, Franz Ferdinand, The All-American Rejects, The Offspring, Busta Rhymes with Linkin Park..the usual suspects really. Expect EA to make a huge deal out of them though, with viral videos, a special issue of Billboard magazine, and beginning the week of August 4th they'll be a different Madden artist performing each night on a "popular late night show". Hit the jump for more details, along with the full 26-song track listing.

Electronic Arts has satisfied the Federal Trade Commission's extensive second request for information in the publisher's bid to acquire Take-Two, the company revealed through an SEC filing today - and, pursuant to EA's agreement with the FTC, it won't "consummate" any acquisition before August 21.

That is, unless the FTC finishes its investigation sooner. It's now got the information it needs from EA in its quest to determine possible antitrust issues, but Take-Two has appeared to struggle with fulfiling the broad-ranging request; when it was initially uncompliant, the District Court of Washington, D.C. had demanded it show cause, with Take-Two risking an injunction if it failed to pony up.

However, Tiffany Steckler of EA's corporate communications said that the August 21 timeline applies regardless of what Take-Two does:

As posted earlier, Kotaku's own Mike "Michael" McWhertor was impressed with Skate It's straight forward incorporation of the Wii Balance Board. But for some, maybe just the regular Wii Balance Board isn't enough to get them in the mood for skating. Maybe they want something to sexy the board up. You know, like some sort of snap-on peripheral. Nothing's been announced by EA, but rumours persist Skate It will ship with something like that. When asked if such Balance Board peripheral exists, EA replied:

That's something I haven't heard. So... Our focus is just working with what is provided by Nintendo. So there's not an extra piece. You know, it's really about working with the Balance Board. So if you have one, this is another game you can play with it. It's not about fitness, it's about skateboarding and having fun.

There's a video after the jump. Watch it if you like.

We hope you're ready for a world in which all games are controlled with your feet, because following the success of Wii Fit and the welcoming of the game's Balance Board peripheral by third-party developers, it's only going to ramp up from here. Fortunately, in the case of the Skate It at least, playing games with your feet may not be such a bad thing. It has the potential to be about as awkward as any attempt to ride a skateboard, if it's your first time, but you might be surprised at how easily one can pull off nose manuals and nollie kickflips within minutes.

You now have two more ways to get your online Scrabble fix, as EA and Hasbro have announced the release of Scrabble on Pogo.com with a Facebook app to hit the social networking site later this month. Wait, you say, I'm already enjoying Scrabble via Facebook, Kotaku! No, that's Scrabulous, an unofficial Scrabble clone that Hasbro attempted to have pulled. It's still up.

Regardless you can play the Pogo.com version, should have you have the patience for it. As much as we'd like to impress the Scrabble bot AI with our vocabulary, we're probably going to pass in favour of reading the press release for the third time. It's full of words!

You have plenty of time between now and the proposed release date of BioWare's role-playing game Dragon Age to stoke your enthusiasm. What might help are promised new details on the PC-bound RPG, which the official Dragon Age site says is due on July 9. That's just a mere two days from now. Normally, we'd expect to see a Flash-driven countdown clock to ratchet up the anticipation, but sadly we don't get one.

Hopefully, we'll get to play it at E3. Talons crossed!

Dragon Age [BioWare - thanks, Mystery Tipster!]

It's hard to believe by this year's E3 is one week away. The show unofficial kicks off at 10:30 a.m. Pacific on Monday when Microsoft starts their press conference. While the show floor, or what there is of a show floor, won't open until Tuesday, there will be plenty of events to look forward on Monday alone. Here's a run down of some of the highlights for the week:

Sunday
8 p.m. Kotaku Party: Open to everyone (21 and over)

Monday
10:30 a.m. Microsoft Presser
1 p.m. Shane Kim Roundtable
3 p.m. EA Presser
8:30 p.m. Gears of War 2 Reception

Tuesday
9 a.m. Show Floor Opens
9 a.m. Nintendo Presser
11:30 a.m. Sony Presser
2: 30 p.m. Ubisoft Presser
4:30 p.m. Capcom Presser
7 p.m. Activision Presser (Not technically a part of E3)

Wednesday
9:15 a.m. E3 Keynote by Gov. Perry
10 a.m. Sony Roundtable
10:45 a.m. Take Two Presser
1 p.m. State of the Industry Keynote
2:30 p.m. Konami Presser

There are, of course, plenty of booth tours, one-on-one interviews, meetings and parties that I didn't include in this concise snapshot. What are you most eager to check out? Me? I'm psyched for the big three's keynote's because those are almost always chockful of news. I'm also interested to see what both Take-Two and EA have to say at their pressers, I expect some news from both, maybe even related, though I sort doubt it. More than any year before, though, I think this E3 will be the year of the third-parties. Lots of big games being shown off.

Hit the jump to vote on what you most want to hear about and see next week.

I was pretty disappointed with MySims for the Nintendo Wii. While it did allow me to create a digital mini-Crecente and guide him through a cute and colorful world, which has long been a dream of mine, I found it lacked a certain something. It just wasn't fun. Could an online component change that? We'll find out this October when EA releases MySims for the PC.

It's the same cutesy world, complete with fruit harvesting, mining, socialising, and building, only now you'll be able to share your creations and play games with up to seven friends online. You can even email or IM things you build to other players so they can use them in their own MySims town. Creating a community based around player-created content might just be exactly what MySims PC needs to succeed where the Wii version failed.

Once was a time Burnout was all about the cars. Then they went and brought bikes into the mix, and everything changed. Criterion got a little...crazy. Started thinking less about the vehicles and more about the pure speed. That doesn't make it any less surprising to hear Criterion is thinking about moving beyond terrestrial vehicles altogether, though, and has announced that, after it's done with the Cagney update, it'll begin working on introducing planes into Burnout Paradise. Yeah, planes. No idea how that will work, but the prospect of crashing a plane into a car at high speed, then going into crash mode, is no doubt an appealing one to the game's core userbase.

[Criterion Games]