FYI, they have been saying that for a while now, and have very little EA Sports games BC.

Bill Cowher talk to Mike and Mike about the game this morning. EA must have paid a few dollars to get ESPN run that infomercial.

ESPN is part of the game.

Has anyone preordered from EA before?
Do they ship it early, so it arrives on the release day?
Or do they wait until release day to ship it?

In the past I've seen that people that pre-order from the site directly are usually the last to receive it. YMMV.

Fair enough, but you'd think with this particular version they'd eventually make it BC since there's no 360 incarnation of it.

You can sim through practices and therefore have the assistant coaches handle it, I'm 99% sure. Of course, they might not be as effective as you would be at running practice. As far as the motivational speeches, they are given during the game, and I think you have to do them or they don't get done.

The guys at GameStop were stunned when I asked to preorder the PC version of this game. It was like they'd never heard of preordering a PC game before. :) Anyway, I don't know whether to expect it on Tuesday or Wednesday, but I'm looking forward to bringing the Broncos to glory! Ron Dayne will have his day!!!

Dola

About backwards compatibility, who's actually responsible for creating the BC software emulator for each game? Is it Microsoft or the game's developer?

My understanding is that Microsoft is and they have to have permission from the developer in order to do it.

My Best Buy ad that came out on Sundays shows this game will be in on Wednesday at 5:00PM.


Usually Fry's has a special on the first week of a game release.

And Best Buy usually has a sale on there EA sports release like a week or 2 after the game comes out.

Hey Joe....where you goin', with that gun in your hand?

I'm disappointed that you can only play 5 minute quarters.

Is no one concern how the sim stats will be like?

Especially if you coach out the games and you want to compare your stats with the sim stats.

Has anyone confirmed that the quarters will be 5 minutes in the final version?

There is so much that concerns me about this game. I have very low expectations of it and I'm amazed that so many people are preordering it.

Hmm, what about MVP College Baseball or Arena Football?

Me too, very disappointed. In fact, if this is true, it's a HUGE game-killer to me. I am still very interested in how this game plays out, but I won't pre-order anymore. I'll wait for some impressions from you guys, and then make my decision.

Gah! Worst interface ever

Where has it been confirmed that you can only play 5 minute quarters? I've scoured websites and haven't seen that confirmed anywhere.

I haven't been able to find it either.

I hope that one of you guys that have pre-ordered confirms this ASAP, so that I can go get it ASAP. :)

I hope to be commenting on this issue tomorrow, assuming my copy arrives at the store ok. Since I'm on vacation, I'm planning on a marathon session with plenty of impressions tomorrow.

I think I'm more concerned with the AI.

No, seriously. It sounds like running the practices yourself is the best idea to get the most out of your players, but I see it as something akin to time management in TCY -- once you figure it out, it's just a routine exercise. Seems to me like as players, we'll probably be able to 'ace' it after a while, while the AI won't, because of 'realism.' So our options will be to A) have the coaches handle it, not get as much as possible out of our team, but not gain an edge on the computer AI, or B) Do it ourselves and get a leg up on the AI for doing the best we can.

OMG Someone has just played it..
 

This does not sound good..

Go here

http://forums.ea.com/mboards/thread....79843&tstart=0

yeahhh...that's making me go "whoa i'm waiting until i can see if the 5 minute quarters work or there's a patch/mod"

too bad EA, almost had me there

Jeebus we are a bunch of whiny biatches. First we have a 100 page thread about a football game that's too customizable, and now we are slamming another game for not being customizable enough. ;)

That being said, I haven't been inspired to write a parody song about NFL Head Coach. (yet :D )

Wow. Completely cheezy.

Someone says that of every single game that has ever been released.

I think expectations are WAY too high. Madden is not realistic statistically and this game is based on the Madden engine. All we can realistically hope for is a fun game that rewards you for your football savy... or something.

I am disappointed in myself too,
It was a moment of weakness.

I read a few pages back,that, there will be no draft busts.
Right there it tells me this game is not meant for us but the madden crowd.

I only read the first page of that thread (I think it's at 10 pages as of when I'm reading it), so maybe someone brought this up later...but that person's complaint is that you can kill a 5 minute quarter in 7 running plays. My question is...how is that different than Madden? Why is that an issue now?

I think this game is supposed to appeal to those who want realism more.

In Madden you can change the quarter length to compensate for play style. Five minute quarters are a big warning bell for me.

For starters, it butchers the 2 minute drill. (I made this point above) Beyond that, it's going to be really tough to get the amount of plays correct. And if the computer coaches aren't set to identify the changes, we are going to see them start to use their timeouts in a close game at the BEGINNING of the fourth quarter.

Why they couldn't have had 15 minutes with an accelerated clock or have made it an option is insanity.

Lovely. They just told me that since I bought it from the EA store, I can't use the EA downloader.

Which makes NO fucking sense what so ever when you think about it.

Nay, this game is supposed to appeal to buyers, whoever it may be.

I guess it just depends on how you play. I've always played Madden on 5 min quarters and never had issues with getting off enough plays to be realistic. Of course, I don't wind the clock down, and don't spend a large portion of the clock picking the play since usually I'll know exactly what I want to run. But I understand the concern of others.

It HAS been an issue in Madden and one only partially solved by accel clock.

It drives me crazy that NONE of the game developers can get this straight - make a 15 minute game with accel clock that averages the # of plays that is averaged in the NFL - What is so fucking hard to understand about that???? allow the 10 year old A.D.D. joystick jockeys who only care about TD dances to reduce the time because they are incapable of concentration on one thing for that long, but for the love of god at least have the option to play a realistic amount of plays in there.

(anger and frustration directed at game designers, not the quoted post or anyone else)

that is absurd - every product has a target market. Makers of organic tofu cubes don't spend a lot of time advertising on NASCAR.

This game was made for the target market of people who want a realistic NFL sim - if they try to make this Madden with the added feature that you can't control the players this will be a one trick pony.

The average Madden Joystick Jockey doesn't even understand why this game is being read (I have read their posts on other forums) this game MUST appeal and appease the type of people that buy FOF and OOTP and the like or it will not make it.

Wow, WTF 5 minute quarters?! Well, that just solved my problem of whether to buy this EA "poser" or the real deal FM 2006. FM it is.

i feel like this has to be a huge deal-breaker. personally i know i could spend almost the whole 30 second clock talking to players, selecting a play, etc.

Well, that is very disappointing about the 5 minute quarters. Hopefully, it can be modded to make the time of possession more realistic. I'm still (probably foolishly) looking forward to picking this up tomorrow.

I wonder how many minutes per quarter the sim games going to be?

i'll be holding off to see if the quarter length can be successfully modded or if (for some reason) this isn't as much of a deal breaker for me as it seems to be from initial reports.

I'll be posting stats of my first few games. I'm hoping the guy from Maddennation is right, and that I can still get off a decent number of plays while talking to my guys..

Right now Wal-mart is touting a release of the 22nd, I stopped by a rhino to see if they had it, and they are saying the 23rd, I hope the download version is out before then.

Another new video up on gametrailers.com.
At the end of the video they show the number 1 coach of all time.



Don Schula

I think some of you guys are too anxious for the game. Its hard to back down now after reading about it for so long. Its human nature to feel like that.

Its probably best to wait for first game impressions before buying the game.

Man, Don Shula was robbed!

First game Impressions by Madden Nation

http://maddennation.com/forums/showthread.php?t=58191

dola

Check out this blog.

http://blog.myspace.com/maddennation