News and notes from around the world of sports video gaming:
• EA Sports has gone cover-vote crazy of late, but Madden NFL 13's all-star 64-man scrum for cover honors isn't the only contest taking place this spring. College Lacrosse 2012, the third edition of the Xbox Live Indie Game sports simulation, will hold a fan-voted cover contest through its Facebook page beginning tomorrow. Those are the three examples above.
• From Twitter, Ronnie Singh, 2K Sports' community manager, put out an appeal to have Jeremy Lin visit their northern California studio to record motion-capture video for NBA 2K13. Lin grew up in Palo Alto, so Singh's figuring that he'll be back in the area sometime during the off-season and can pop over for some signature passing and dribble animations. Singh also made appeals to Bruce Baumgautner, who plays Kevin Malone on "The Office," and the Yankees' Nick Swisher, regarding "a fun opportunity for you pertaining to the NBA 2K franchise." Wonder what they have cooking?
• Remember the celebrity golfers coming to Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13 as a pre-order bonus? If we're this close to release and have heard nothing else, I'd say that's as far as celebrity in-game participants go. You can get a look at all four here, which you get as a download code when you preorder through Amazon.
• Surprise, surprise. Sports game launches, sports game has problems with multiplayer on launch day. This time it's UFC Undisputed 3 [Pasta Padre]
• Elsewhere at the virtual country club, John McEnroe gets a code violation for racket abuse in Grand Slam Tennis 2's launch trailer. That game arrived on Tuesday for PS3 and Xbox 360.