Madden's Current Gen Has Not Been a Success

[RaychelSnr]

To say that the Madden series has been a success this console generation would be an overstatement of the decade.

Think back to the year 2004, a year that could be summed up as nothing short of a football gaming utopia. NFL 2K5 aside, EA's Madden 2005 set the bar for all successive iterations in the series. The game was the perfect blend of polished gameplay, solid presentation, and new and innovative features like defensive playmaker controls. Madden 05 had football gamers glued to their consoles for months to come.

Fast forward to 2006 when the now infamous Madden "next-gen" trailer was released, and the hype surrounding Madden's move to the Xbox 360 and PS3 was at a fever pitch.

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[elgreazy1]

Competition breeds excellence, and Madden hasn't had competition since Madden 05. When a product or service no longer has to work hard to earn your money then the quality of the product or service will suffer.

[unfriendlyghst]

Spot on analysis. I for one was overseas when the trailer and subsequent madden 06 game were released . Needless to say its 2011 and I am still not impressed.

[Eski33]

Nice blog but this whole topic has been beaten to death. You didn't mention anything new that has not been said or written in the past five years.

From my standpoint and a longtime gamer (have played every rendition of Madden since its Apple II days) Madden isn't a failure. To gamers, yes, the game has not lived up to a certain level of expectation especially on consoles that are to have more power. From an economic standpoint, people are still buying Madden. If Madden is so bad, how is it making so much money? Simple -- There are people out there who find the game fun.

I am on the fence. When the 360 / PS3 era came about, my expectations mirrored everyone else's. I couldn't wait to see what EA would do with more graphical power and with consoles having HDD as a norm, EA was sure to break out all the stops. Instead, what we got was a stripped down game that didn't have nearly the features the PS2 / XBox versions had.

Since that time, the Madden series improved little by little each year. Madden 09 and 10 were great games with Madden 10 taking visual leaps over its predecessor. The problem with Madden is that there are people want it to fail that they spend every waking moment looking for bugs, glitches, issues, etc. and blogging, writing in forums and recording videos that go straight to YouTube for all to see.

I understand why people do this. They want competition back which is a great thing.

In looking at what the NCAA 11 team did, this has to push the ante for the Madden team because NCAA 11, although not perfect, is one of the best console football games to date. It is visually pleasing as well as the online dynasty has to be one of the best multi-player features ever (outside of BAP in NHL).

To compare Madden to a game like Backbreaker is almost criminal. First, to say a developer with fewer resources created a revolutionary physics engine is a tad slanted. Keep in mind that the developer of Back Breaker developed the physics engine first THEN creaeted a football game as a way to show it off. They aren't a football game developer who created a great physics engine. Also, your blog makes it seem as if they created this physics engine in one development cycle which isn't the case. NatualMotion was working on that physics engine for years and it took almost as long to release BackBreaker.

I have no issues with the physics engine that is currently utilized in Madden and NCAA. Only those that cannot get past the simple fact that these are games and they will never fully emulate reality will continue to be "unhappy" with the state of Madden and other games.

[unfriendlyghst]

I don't understand how madden not having consecutive hit tackling going in 2011 is anyone wanting the game to fail

[Segagendude]

Unfair comaprison, I know......but......

When I take a look at The Show, Madden seems like a PS1 game still in developement.

I agree with this blog 100%. I just hope Ian and co. can FINALLY change this.....

[Nab_Impervious_XII]

Simple statement: We just badly need competition in football to achieve breakthrough advances.

EA's FIFA rarely gets competition, but I feel like that game has already maximized its reality (It's not tremendously hard to simulate people running with the occasional tackle).

But american football has 22 people in constant interaction with each other. It's extremely difficult to simulate. And without competition, EA isn't going to take the necessary risks to achieve this momentous task when the 'status quo' is enough to sell games.

[siznit]

This blog speaks the truth. If 2ksports could of made NFL games on this generation of consoles EA Sports would be making a lot better Madden games than they are now. They are saving their big features and gameplay tweaks for when 2k gets the NFL license again.