The Unfortunate Tale of the Magic Madden Movie - RaychelSnr's Blog

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The Unfortunate Tale of the Magic Madden Movie Stuck

Posted on September 30, 2009 at 12:19 PM.

(10)

The year was 2005 and expectations were at an all time high after EA released their next gen Madden video.

Those expectations quickly soured.

Looking back, it is little surprise why there has been such a blowback towards Madden the past several seasons. First EA set expectations at an all-time high and then they forcefully annexed the competition all before the debut of the next-gen Madden. Not only was the competition gone, but fans were expecting great things out of the folks down in Orlando.

And then Madden 06 hit store shelves.

It was just like a fiery car crash, the carnage was everywhere. After EA showed tech which was a generation or more ahead of schedule, it delivered a game which didn't even match up with the games of the previous generation. Not surprisingly, NFL video game fans largely staged a revolt.

High expectations turned into high anger.

The big mistake EA made was that it raised expectations to an unrealistic level. Since that day EA released the Magic Madden Movie, they have been fighting an uphill battle of giant expectations. Since Madden 06, EA has been trying to balance the realistic goal of making modest year over year improvements with a fanbase which demands more than that.

And it all can be traced back to a simple mistake: the Magic Madden Movie.

Comments

# 1 clarkerots @ Sep 30

Staged a revolt? That would've been nice, except what really happened is Madden fans got a little mad, then bought the next few games like clockwork. I remember the discussion on OS when this video came out. Most people never believed the actual trailer, and weren't surprised when it didn't "pan out". I think the trailer was only the icing on the cake. The real problem that Madden has is being around for 20 years and comparing where they are to where they should be. Its totally inexcusable to have a game that doesn't have options that the same game had 4 years ago, or to have lacking presentation compared to a 5 year old game.

# 2 Cardot @ Sep 30

I remember that well. In fact I remember some die-hards on the forums saying that it was an early build, and that the final build would look at least that good, and likely better.

# 3 Cardot @ Sep 30

Here is one of the old threads on this. I think there may have been a few more. Either way, fun to see what people were predicting 5 years ago.

http://www.operationsports.com/forum...tease-wow.html

# 4 HiTEqMETHOD @ Sep 30

I remember watching the video on gamestop.com when I was looking at all the games that were going to be coming out for 360 on launch day.

I ended up buying Madden 06, Perfect Dark Zero, Condemned, and Call of Duty 2. Madden and Perfect Dark were HUGE letdowns. Call of Duty 2 was awesome and Condemned remains one of the most underrated and under appreciated games on the 360 in my opinion. Condemned 2 was alright but the first was better.

LOL, at how I reacted after seeing the video for the first time. I was bugging out then when I played the game I felt like I was blindsided and punched right in the face.

# 5 CreatineKasey @ Sep 30

That video was the reason I bought an xbox 360 on the first week. I'm not kidding. It ended up working out... but I still vividly remember that video because, like you said, my hopes were SO high for next gen football.

# 6 bigsmallwood @ Sep 30

And this is what Madden is known for lately....Big Promises.....under delivering. SMH.

If they had a game that even looked remotely close to this and had the cutscenes, chatter, etc.....we would not be complaining about Madden. This video was the reason I decided to go Next-Gen.....ahhhh

# 7 TreyIM2 @ Oct 1

I dunno. Looking back at that vid, it's really not impressive, anymore. I see a lot of not so goodness in the movement, looking similar to what is there, today, and such but back then, of course, it was the ISH!! Lol. Eh

# 8 jdareal21 @ Oct 2

I don't understand. Even on the original Playstation Madden, they showed images from the beginning montage which featured vastly superior graphics to what the actual gameplay had. Everyone thought the game would really look like that, but it didn't. And......I don't remember any issues with that lol.

Really, the issues people had with Madden 06 were the lack of features and modes, missing gameplay elements, and non existent controls that were already there in the current gen. Nobody was saying it was a bad looking game, the graphics had nothing to do with it. Everybody just assumed the game would contain exactly everything we were already accustomed to, which it didn't. Looking back, it makes sense, they totally rebuilt the game, just like they did with Madden 2001 for PS2, which also was pretty barebones in it's inception

# 9 rudeworld @ Oct 3

seen that vid here and on other sites and was like... WHOA!!! this is going to be the best videogame ever.... then we got a watered down version of the PS2 version with slightly better graphics that wasnt even better then NFL 2K5 (IMHO). that and they didnt have any type of presentation... the gameplay was horrible..... it was like talking to a girl on a social website then meeting her and realizing that wasnt you in the pictures you showed me