Madden Creative Director, Ian Cummings is Leaving Tiburon

[Jistic]

Quote: Originally Posted by TheShizNo1

um...why is this a big deal?

Cuz now we're pretending that Ian made Madden awesome.

[coogrfan]

Quote: Originally Posted by kjcheezhead

I personally think the bulk of Madden's troubles are caused from an expensive license eating into development funds and too much of the remaining funds getting diverted to casual friendly areas like Madden Ultimate Team and gameflow/plan. It doesn't matter who is in charge if the money for the game keeps getting allocated to areas like these.

That's one theory. Imo it's simpler than that--this generation's Madden series was compromised from the outset.

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/655/655273p1.html

Quote: Originally Posted by State of the Xbox 360: Final Oct. 2 2005

We had seen the future of HD, and it wasn't all it was cracked up to be. The truth of the matter was that the vacuum of information that created one of the dullest summer sessions in countless years. It turns out this effect was partially created by design, partially because of the late delivery of Beta Kits. Microsoft finally delivered Beta Development Kits in June, several weeks after they were promised to developers. Their delay partially caused the unimpressive E3 showing, but it also meant that developers didn't have the triple-core processors to work with until well into the summer. The kits, as reported in our feature story "Enter the Beta", were unstable and difficult for developers to adjust to at first, but in time their games started showing some breakthroughs. The Beta Kit architecture much more closely resembled the final console architecture, it showed real processing power, and it gave programmers a much clearer idea of how to address the totally new multi-core processors, which game developers had never seen before.

This was significant because it meant that the team responsible for developing the initial Madden 06 (360) (i.e. the basic code that would be the foundation for all of EA's next-gen football titles for years to come) had to do so with only limited knowledge of how the final 360 hardware actually worked.

I'm not saying that MS's failure to deliver beta dev kits on schedule was the sole cause of all of the problems we've seen with EA's next-gen fb titles. There were some very questionable initial design choices made as well, decisions that repeatedly forced the development teams of the subsequent Madden's to spend a fair amount of their time trying to find workarounds for the mistakes made in the past. I am saying that this generation's Madden got off to a dreadful start, one from which the series has never fully recovered.

[BezO]

Quote: Originally Posted by TheShizNo1

um...why is this a big deal?

He was only the lead developer of the game we're all here talking about. He left in the middle of the development cycle. Not big?

[LiquorLogic]

Change is good. Shaking things up can't do anything but help this franchise.

Quote: Originally Posted by rgiles36

How long before the very people that openly despise the Madden franchise say they'll miss Ian?

How long did it take for those people say they missed David Ortiz ?

[GiantBlue76]

Quote: Originally Posted by BezO

He was only the lead developer of the game we're all here talking about. He left in the middle of the development cycle. Not big?

Actually, he's not a developer at all. He was a creative director.

[quietcool72]

Quote: Originally Posted by coogrfan

That's one theory. Imo it's simpler than that--this generation's Madden series was compromised from the outset. http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/655/655273p1.html This was significant because it meant that the team responsible for developing the initial Madden 06 (360) (i.e. the basic code that would be the foundation for all of EA's next-gen football titles for years to come) had to do so with only limited knowledge of how the final 360 hardware actually worked. I'm not saying that MS's failure to deliver beta dev kits on schedule was the sole cause of all of the problems we've seen with EA's next-gen fb titles. There were some very questionable initial design choices made as well, decisions that repeatedly forced the development teams of the subsequent Madden's to spend a fair amount of their time trying to find workarounds for the mistakes made in the past. I am saying that this generation's Madden got off to a dreadful start, one from which the series has never fully recovered.

They have had plenty of time to recover since 06, I'd say

[BezO]

Quote: Originally Posted by tazdevil20

Actually, he's not a developer at all. He was a creative director.

Not a big deal?

[SouthernBrick]

Unexpected. Not really worried about madden and it's future.

There is no telling if I'll wind up buying the game anyway.