A Sports and ESPN have teamed up to bring a new level of interactivity to popular football television programs. Today, the pair revealed the EA Sports Virtual Playbook – which will be integrated into several top shows starting this week.

The technology, developed by both companies in tandem, will allow sports analysts to interact with virtual players as a means to provide insight and information to fans about sports plays and techniques. Branded as a form of “augmented reality” it will be integrated into ESPN's Sunday NFL Countdown, Monday Night Countdown and NFL Live. If you are interested in checking it out, it will debut September 7. In the future, the feature may also be included in other ESPN programs such as SportsCenter, ESPNEWS and First Take in the future.

“EA Sports Virtual Playbook is born out of our deep football heritage at EA Sports and our drive to expand the impact of our innovative sports technologies beyond gaming,” said Peter Moore, president of EA Sports. “Telecast on ESPN, EA Sports Virtual Playbook marks the future of sports production by allowing television analysts to highlight, critique and dissect on-field action more intimately than ever before. EA Sports Virtual Playbook brings an entirely new level of excitement and realism to football analysis to ESPN viewers this NFL season.”