this reallly is old news

Is this the same EA that my brother from NY and me from NJ cannot play against each other online because we are on the same friend list? The Same one that makes you pay for alternative uniforms, knowing damn well that the same 500,000 guys buy this game every year? I don't fault EA for wining the bid, I fault them for putting out garbage and now innovating in the space they now own. I fault them for not making the game as fun an other games and for still being behind NFL 2K5 for presentation.

I fault them for not having sideline interactions like All Pro football had, even with no license. I fault them for having shoddy online code, when 2K showed us how to do it way back in the Dreamcast games. YOU HAVE TO BE KIDDING ME WITH THIS ARTICLE! No they are not evil, but they don't love their fans either.

I think that EA has always gotten a bad rap. I agree that this generation of great games came late but where would sports games be without EA.

Lets go back to the early 80's. EA was the first to create sports games depicting real athletes. I owned Dr. J vs Larry Bird for the Commodore 64. It was the first game I saw that had real athletes and on-screen characters that resembled them.

This goes without mentioning the great sports games EA developed for the Genesis and SNES. Without EA pioneering the sports genre it wouldnt be where it is today.

I still believe peoples' expectations for realism are a little out of control. Still read way too many blogs and forums that players dont do things in games like they do in reality. The fact of the matter is we have been blesssed with some of the best sports games over the past couple of years and this years lineup is stellar.

EA has earned some of its lumps but it still is the king of sports, love'em or hate'em.

I will never blame EA for bidding on the exclusive rights to NFL. I work for a resturant company and if we were offered the rights to bid and be the only store in the malls food court all across the country wouldn't that make business sense? However the fact that the games have not lived up to our expectations I do blame EA for that. Do I hate them not a bit, do I lose sleep over Madden nope. Do I wish that they would add in game saves YES

How quickly we forgive and forget. I dont hate them but they did bid and win the license then turned around and made pretty much a half decade of the same crappy game. As for making the most sports games, who exactly cares that they make the most games. Last time i checked it is quality over quantity in the gaming industry. Now if they can can make 5 years straight of great sports games then maybe ill let up.

EA only cares about making the extra buck... is not only in their sports games but they are doing it with games like Battlefield 3. They are charging fees for extra weapons and uniforms ..
http://blogs.forbes.com/insertcoin/2...-went-too-far/

To be fair, actually Britsh people did complain that the US entered the war late. I'm just saying.

Great points all around... and great comments going both ways to boot. However, in my opinion there are always "Evil" companies when there are leaders of industry and "everybody else". EA is a leader, all others are runners up. SAP is a leader, Oracle is a runner up, Microsoft is a leader.... you get the idea. EA makes strong business forecasts and plans aggresively in order to corner the market to make the most money, and to make better games, that will in turn - make more money. I work for SAP and they have cornered the market in enterprise software for businesses. They have a very similar rep in the industry as being the Evil empire when it comes to running it's company.

As far as the developers and all the other folks who work on the games, absolutely not. Im sure those guys go to work and put in their 8-10 hours a day just like the rest of us. The problem starts at the top, as it does with most large companies. All the suits care about is money, and how many people that can get it from.

But if you really think about it, its only Madden and NCAA that suffers. Fifa, NHL, Boxing, even the Skate series have all been really good over the past few years. Hell, if you think about all the non EA Sports titles that have come out, they have been pretty freakin awesome (Dead Space, Bulletstorm, Crysis, Mass Effect, Battlefield....etc). I dont hate EA, i just hate what they did with Madden since the current gen consoles came about.

EA deserves the bad guy rap and everything that comes with it. They say games are sim and they are hybrids of arcade and realistic elements.

The NFL is showing with thier CBA problems just had greedy and dispicable they can be to their fans at times but EA still most definitely deserves the bad guy rap for what it did after aquiring the license. Madden 12 appears to finally have produced game modes as deep as the game had pre-exclusivity. In that same time, EA had no problem charging for MUT, Madden Moments, franchise boosts and every other addition they felt they could get an extra nickel for.

And speaking of that, you call milking their fans for every loose penny they can find looking after their customers? The only reason NBA Live didn't release was because of how much of a joke it was about to become. Trust me, if EA had an exclusive on the NBA market that game would have hit store shelves without a second thought. Then they would have continued to build off that joke of a game this year too all the while promising they fixed all the things that made NBA Live 11 so bad.

Evil, no! Some of there decisions are head scratchers. Do I assume that EA did not know "Franchise mode" was huge when they made the first game for the 360? Why a game is released with stripped down features is beyond me. It happened when the PS2 first came out. Game looked good, but that was about it.
Then the number of years to get things on the right track Ian and company for Madden 10! I remember Josh Looman explaining all the things he had to fix just to get Franchise work properly for the features the game already had. Tuning draft and free agency somewhat.
The rush to put out a product for a quick buck is dumb. The name "Madden" should mean your getting a quality game. It's there top selling sports game in the U.S. A game with all the features and basics of a yearly NFL season.

That's what frustrates me.

Madden 12 looking and sounding good. Looking forward to playing it and the future of Madden with Looman heading Franchise mode!

Boy, what a deep issue this is... I think the company itself absolutely deserves a bad rap. The devs of the games get everything taken out on them because they are our only access to EA. So, as a result, they get the brunt of the criticism, when, in reality it may not be their fault.

What gets me about all of this is how EA canada seems to be way ahead of EA tiburon in terms of technology and making great games. Look at NHL 10, FIFA and I believe NBA Elite was EA canada as well. I know, NBA Elite was complete garbage. But, my point is this... look at NHL, FIFA and NBA Elite in terms of a technological standpoint. They all use REAL-TIME PHYSICS in their games to make their games infinitely more realistic. This is where I believe there is a disconnect between EA orlando and EA Canada, at least in terms of the corporation standpoint.

I don't exactly know how EA works in that regard, but what I don't understand is how EA Canada can decide to use real-time physics in the games they have been given to develop, but Madden and NCAA cannot, or even Tiger Woods or Fight Night. I don't necessarily believe it's a can or cannot issue. I believe it's how the people just above the devs decide to allocate their resources. Maybe that is not their decision. I don't know how EA works at all. I can only go by what I see.

Will Madden or NCAA ever take a year off to truly develop a physics-engine? No, they sure won't... but I wish they would do what FIFA did... and develop their own "impact engine" for football so that it uses real-time physics for the tackles and blocking, and that completely eliminates canned animations. We have had excuse after excuse about why Madden and NCAA can't use "real-time physics." But, FIFA and NBA Elite are using them, and they say the NHL series uses physics. So, to me, it's a huge disconnect.

So yes, I do believe EA, as a whole, deserves every single bad rap it gets. I just think it's a shame that the devs and guys like cam weber have to get the brunt of the criticism because they are just doing what they are told. The quote always says, "don't kill the messenger." Basically, don't blame the middle man. But, in our society today, there is little to no access to the people on the top and the only people we have access to are the middle men, in this case, cam weber and the devs. So, again, I think this is a corporate problem, not cam's or Ben Haumiller's or anyone like that.

Again... I wish I could have an explanation as to why the EA Canada team can, and is using real-time physics in their franchises, but EA Tiburon, or the EA headquartered in Orlando is not. There is some sort of disconnect there, and it stinks.

Anyway, great topic Chris, this is always a hot discussion. It's good to see people actually keeping it civil on these forums and not just going off.

What you say is true. EA isn't a bad-guy for these reasons.

EA's a bad guy for having turned to a "2-3 new goodies" in the game instead of working on the game itself to make it more fun.

EA is making me think of Alex Kovalev. Could be the best on the ice, but not producing to the level we expect. Is it lazyness? Is it disrespect? Is it because not beeing as good as we think? I don't know for sure, but I expect EA to do a better job with their games (especially AI) and they don't years after years.

Yes they do. EA Sports does not do all that it can to cater to the hard core fans of sports gaming. And when faced with stiff competition, they bought the license and sat on it delivering mediocre game after mediocre game. Sorry I think it is a rep WELL earned. And not just because of Madden.