Sakonoko won the Godsgarden Online Tournament final, beating YHC Mochi 10-5 earlier today. The final is posted above if you want to watch (starts at 16:04).

The stats of the tournament are in the stats section.

The two big advantages that helped Sako get the victory were EX usage and getting the first combo. Whereas most Dhalsim users value getting the first combo, Sako took that away from Mochi. Sako was 14-for-26 when getting the first combo, Mochi was barely 3-for-8.

Sako used more than double the EX meters than Mochi, 89-37, and then had a 2-to-1 success rate. That seemed to be too much to overcome.

I'll have much more from this tournament later today, so stay tuned.

Eduardo "Puerto Rico Balrog" Perez has joined Dominion Method Gaming, the organization announced Friday.

Perez has been a well-known boxer user in the Street Fighter IV series and has used various characters in HD Remix. He reached Championship Sunday of Evolution 2009's "Street Fighter IV" tournament, the only boxer player to do so. He was also one of three international players -- he's from San Juan -- to reach Championship Sunday that year in that game.

Here's part of the statement from Dominion Method Gaming:

He is considered the very best Balrog in the US and the best player in Puerto Rico. He came out of nowhere in the past year with his crazy skills with the boxer and fighting hard for that money. He has wow his fans, gain respect from fellow players and started a following... in the community.

Picture by Terry Ng.

A few days ago, at San Diego Comic-Con, Mark Julio of MadCatz spent a few minutes with Katsuhiro Harada and Michael Murray of Namco talking about Street Fighter x Tekken.

You'll get a chance to hear thoughts from Harada-San about the styles and what the developers are expecting. Harada-San says a lot of people are wondering how the Street Fighter characters will play in Namco's version, Tekken x Street Fighter.

Right here is the place to do it.

From Seth Killian at Capcom:

Street Fighter III: Third Strike Online Edition is indeed coming.  When?  Can't say.  For which platforms?  Also still too soon.

What I can do is point you to the thread where you can tell us what you'd like to see.  As Ono-san mentioned, share your thoughts, and we'll see what kind of magic we can make happen...

EA Sports says it will add the original pre-snap features back in the game via a patch later this year. They were taken out because of the new Strategy Pad, which has received not a lot of public positive response.

Creative director Ian Cummings said he hopes the download will be available by the first week of the NFL season, which would be sometime around Sept. 12.

The download date mean players competing in the D.C. Madden Challenge -- the first tournament in the series -- will have a month to adjust back to the original style, although there are several competitions to take place as the game is nationally released Aug. 10.

In a blog entry posted earlier this afternoon, Cummings said adding the Strategy Pad was a necessary change, and the stats showed it.

A gamer on defense would often hit A (360) or X (PS3) to button through play call or pre-play, and in doing so, would get locked into the "hot route" state. Seeing that you are reading this blog, you probably are pretty experienced with Madden, and you're saying "well, that never happened to me". I'm with you...it didn't happen to me either. Well take this into account...did you know that over 2 BILLION defensive hot route context states were entered in Madden NFL 10? That's an average of more than 5 million per day. We discovered that of this number, more than 50% never called an actual hot route. So on more than 1 BILLION occasions, a gamer accidentally went into a pre-play contextual state that they didn't mean to. As a game designer, you just can't choose to ignore that..it's staggering. To be clear, it's not that we wanted to make pre-play controls easy enough for a caveman to use them, it's that we wanted to fix a system that punished gamers for just accidentally hitting the primary button on the controller.

What turned out to be the vocal minority came out in droves -- however much that might be -- and expressed their dissatisfaction over the change in the system on various forums and social networks.

Earlier in the week, on The Madden Voice radio show, senior producer Phil Frazier said the old-style, pre-snap adjustments were made for the hardcore player, but it was tough to ignore the millions of others that play and have trouble with the system.

"We've watched people with the game (past Maddens), and we've experienced  the fact that you can get locked in that menu and run into a situation where you can't get out," Frazier said. "You do a line move, but you can't snap the ball because you're still in the line menu.

"There was so much functionality built into the pre-play adjustments, a lot of that was for the tournament crowd. There's a lot of people upset because they have to re-learn the system. All the functionality is still there, nothing has changed."

Brian Parker, a member of the EA Sports Game Changers, posted several Twitter comments back-to-back (here's the first), talking about the much-discussed Strategy Pad in Madden 11.

Would a video tutorial have helped? It probably would have made things a lot easier to understand in terms of why the changes were made and how to adapt.

From Parker on Twitter:

Guess I'll throw more fuel on the #Madden11 Strategy Pad fire; it's something you would definitely have to lab to know what buttons do what.

I think the #Madden11 demo would've been a good place to include a tutorial video of some sort on the Strategy Pad to let people learn it.

As it is, very little mention was made of it in E3 impressions and then the new system essentially punched people in the face in the demo.

When people are not prepared for a major change to a system they're used to, it makes them react in the way we have seen the past few days.

We saw countless trailers on GameFlow, which is innocuous in that it works even without your input. Strategy Pad requires skilled input ... but there was nary a trailer in sight to explain the changes being made, WHY those changes were made, to help players adjust and adapt.

MLG Raleigh player passes for Brawl and Tekken 6 are now available.

Each tournament is $35 per person.

This is MLG's 50th pro circuit event, and for the Halo series competitors, there's a little bit extra:

As if that wasn't exciting enough, competing in a Halo Event at Raleigh will guarantee that you'll be one of the first to do what everyone is clamoring to do: play competitive Halo Reach! If you attend Raleigh, we will reserve a place for you at either the D.C. Doritos Pro-Gaming Combine Event or the Dallas Pro Circuit Exhibition Event, both of which will use Halo Reach.

In Tekken 6, Holeman is the defending champ, after beating Fighting GM in the title match in Columbus, Ohio. Brawl has been dominated by Mew2King, who has beaten Ally in both regionals (Columbus, and Orlando, Fla.)

Go here to sign up for Tekken 6. Go here for Brawl.

During The Madden Voice radio show Tuesday, Commissioner T said the EAFL will award cash prizes in addition to its Player of the Year honors, both being firsts in the online league.

Starting next season, when Madden 11 is released, there will be several honors awarded: the player of the first half of the season, player of the second half of the season, and the EAFL Player of the Year.

The half-season winners will both receive $250 each. The EAFL Player of the Year will receive $1,000.

The first-half covers the fall through January, the second half is from January until June. Players can double their chances by participating in both the Xbox Live and PlayStation Network divisions. Points will be awarded for accomplishments within the league up to and including the playoffs.

Rankings will be posted monthly.

The official videos of The Salty Runback have been posted on Machinima Respawn. Daigo Umehara took on Arturo Sanchez in a rematch of their 2009 tilt.

Here are the stats of the match, if you haven't seen it yet.

MvC2 video specialist Striderzer0 has video footage of the $24,000 money match that took place at The Salty Suite at Evolution 2010. Sanford Kelly took on the 4-member West Coast team of Chris Schmidt, Neo, Fanatiq and Chunksta.

It was a 19-game series (first to 10), and per the rules, each member of the West Coast team had to play twice. It wasn't pretty early on, and that's all I'll say about how it went, you'll have to see the rest on Striderzer0's YouTube to find out the ending.