NFL fan? Hope you enjoy Madden. (1 Viewer)

[Marc Bax]

Here's a sad story for all NFL gamers. With no competition expect Madden to grow even more stagnant. As a longtime ESPN 2K series fan this is terrible news.

 

[DaveGTP]

LAME

Not a sports guy but LAME

Hope you Madden folks enjoy paying $50.

 

[Yohan Pamudji]

That is some serious cow manure. This makes me angry enough to write a letter to the NFL commissioner and the Players' Association (ooh, a scary letter!). So much for competition and free enterprise, eh? If you can't win on the merits of your product, throw your weight around and buy them out. Nice one, EA.

With this news, plus the recent fiasco about EA's terrible handling of their employees (unpaid extreme amounts of overtime, pressure to comply or leave, broken promises, etc.), EA is really pushing the goodwill envelope. The letters "EA" on a product will now make me think twice before buying.

 

[Eric Alderson]

I am very disappointed with this news. Now that they have zero competition, they can take a vacation till they need to add an animation or some "cool Hip" licensed tunes and sell it as NFL 2006.

 

[David Galindo]

NOOOOOOOOO! Im...speechless. The shit has hit the fan

Good news for NFL Blitz though...they can goahead and make Blitz Playmakers, somewhat based on the now-cancelled ESPN series:

http://sports.ign.com/articles/572/572886p1.html

 

[Jeff_Standley]

I just saw this on espn.com. Thats too bad I like the ESPN games much better now.

 

[Rob Silver]

LOL, ESPN thought they could steal the market share from EA w/ the $20 price tag. That's some serious back fire and burn. Who's your daddy ESPN sports. 1st comes NFL, then MLB, NBA, NHL, and maybe NCAA hoops. Bye bye ESPN, suck it up and call EA Sports your daddy.

 

[Chris Farmer]

And Rob, this is good for anybody how exactly? At bare minimum ESPN was driving Madden to improve and make changes and avoid stagnation, now EA has no incentive to seriously update the franchise for five years.

 

[Marc Bax]

Wow what a childish statement Rob. You think having zero competition is a good thing? How dare SEGA offer consumers a quality product at an affordable price tag, the nerve.

 

[Brandon_T]

Funny that I has just sworn last week that this was my last Madden, and I was going to ESPN football next year, now I don't know what I will do, I just don't feel its worth the money anymore.

 

[Rob Silver]

Looks like I struck a nerve in the "We don't want to pay $50 for company A's sports game because company B has something similar for $20, but we have a HTS that's worth more than the GNP of a 3rd world country" crowd.

Maybe you should ask Microsoft and Oracle that same question. Even better, ask Apple.

 

[Jon Teddlie]

Ummm the game was called "Tecmo"

 

[Marc Bax]

Rob next time you try and belittle someone with your oh so amazing football gaming knowledge try and get the name of the game right. If you have some issue with the amount of money we spend on HT equipment why are you here? Because we have nice HT's we should happily pay $50 for a game we don't care for? We like to have options, is that wrong of us? Chris never said anything about there only being 3 revisions of Madden. He simply stated that lack of competition breeds stagnation. Is that a hard concept to grasp?

 

[NickC]

http://students.uat.edu/ryamccab/images/madden2006.jpg

 

[JamieD]

This should be illegal. Monopoly, much? Disgusting. An article from a production diary in a gaming mag several years back detailed a product meeting during development of Madden 97. The developers had a list of dozens of changes they felt they needed to make to develop a "killer" football game.. changes to the ai, interface, season/franchise concept, etc.

Execs told them to just pick seven. The seven easiest/fastest. Do those. And thanked them for letting them know what they'd be working on for Madden 98: the next seven easiest, assuming they couldn't find seven new easier ones.

EA is an incredibly well run marketing/production machine. I don't think the people who run the place give a damn about consumers as anything other than consumers, though.

 

[Jay Mitchosky]

Rob

What kind of response did you expect to your post? This is clearly not a pro-Madden thread. Please fart somewhere else.

 

[Alan Erceg]

As someone who was a lontime Madden gamer up until about 3 years ago, this is indeed sad news. I thought ESPN, IMO has put out the superior game in each of the last 3 years, and especially this year.

blah...

 

[Chris Bardon]

I'm actually surprised that this took so long-there was a time when there were tons of games that didn't have the team licences. There was one NHL game if I recall that had the teams but not the players (although I can't remember which). Why does this mean that the sega game is dead though? Are people really so shallow that they'll pass up a football game because it's not an NFL game? Do the names of the players and teams really make that much of a difference when it comes to simulated football?

Of course, the best option for the competition at this point is to try to make an NCAA game. Or, better yet, a CFL game! Yeah-nine whole teams, and two with the same name!

 

[David Galindo]

LOL nick!

 

[Evan M]

I still won't buy any EA Sports title... if anything, this cements that decision. I decided long ago that I despise EA and their methods.