EA Sports announced two upcoming free releases of downloadable content for Fight Night Round 4 today. The first, slated for early August, will add a new gym, "new gameplay sliders" and new equipment plus an alternate version of Sugar Ray Leonard exclusive to the Xbox 360 version.

An early September release may be even more well-received as it will offer face-button control for all of Fight Night's punched. That update, for PS3 and Xbox 360 will be free.

The announcements follow the June 23 release of Fight Night Round 4, which won praise for its graphics and gameplay but took knocks — see comments here — for forcing players to only use the tilts and arcs of a controllers' right stick to throw punches and not offer a button-press option, as had been made available for Fight Night Round 3. (A DLC option was recently rumored.)

"We strongly believe that the refined Total Punch Control is the most intuitive way to throw punches in Fight Night Round 4," the game's senior producer, Dean Richards, said in a press release, "But we also want fans of the franchise to have an option."

EA sent Kotaku further information about the "new gameplay sliders" being offered in August. Those sliders will allow gamers to "tun and tweak the following attributes: Counter Punch Window, Boxer Stamina, Punch Accuracy."

Looks like EA is addressing much of the feedback from gamers. And promptly.

The core idea of it was that I wanted the player to use the controller in a new way, and hitting two random buttons as quickly as possible was just the ticket.

PinataIsland.info interview with Cameron Davis [pinataisland]

Way on the short side and big on the armor fiber close-ups, here's the trailer for cross-platform Soul Calibur IV. It's due out in 2008, so you have all year to practice your button mashing! Brian Ashcraft