When I hear John Madden talk, it is like someone is taking a baseball bat to my head. I do not know why, and I cannot really explain it to you properly, but for some reason whenever I hear him speak, I come close to actual rage. If perchance I see his face plastered somewhere, not only do I get stick at my stomach, once again I get enraged. Even when Frank Caliendo would imitate him on Mad TV, I would feel a weird desire to punch someone in the neck creep over me.
Psychologists would have a field-day over this I am sure, but despite him being my nemesis, I understand that gamers love to play the NFL games he has lent his moniker to. Therefore it is with great psychological pain that I present the new Madden NFL 09 cover art to you, featuring the hunky Brett Favre.
I think I need to go lay down for a while.
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Peter Moore vowed that NFL Head Coach would see a major revamp that would address the many criticisms the first game faced. From the look of this new trailer and developer interview videos, it looks like EA Sports is doings its best to make good on those claims. In addition to the trailer above, you can head over to FileFront and see the Overview, Play Creator and Live Events videos.
I think the coolest aspect of the game is the ability to easily create plays in the play creator and then export those plays so that you can use them in Madden. Hopefully they don’t restrict what you can do in terms of trick plays, as that’s been a lacking component of the Madden playbook for years now, and I’d really like to be able to design some crazy option plays.
Also, if you’re interested in seeing the game up close, there are a few dozen screenshots that you can check out here.
I’m not completely sure yet, but I might be willing to give this year’s Head Coach a try if the price is right.
A curious omission was made last week by EA Sports when they announced the release date for this year’s Madden NFL 09 and revealed some of the details on NFL Head Coach 09 and the 20th anniversary collector’s edition of Madden – there was no word on a PC version. Peter Moore confirmed the news in a post on his EA blog.
We knew that our decision to not develop this year’s Madden for the PC would be an unpopular decision in some circles. But I’ll reiterate what I said a couple of weeks ago in this space…the PC presents some very serious business challenges to us in the sports category, particularly because so many of you all are playing your favorite sports games on the PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii. We are committed to shipping a limited number of our games on the PC this year, but we’ve also had to cut a few of our games from the platform. We do have ideas for how to revitalize the PC for sports games and the types of games that are best suited to the platform, and we’ll continue to explore those.
Yes, he’s extremely vague in what he said so as to say nothing at all. He doesn’t say Madden is never coming back to PC, but he also doesn’t rule out the possibility. Anyone who’s ever tried to pick up your average sports game on PC and tried to play without a controller knows what a mess it is; for everything keyboard and mouse is good for, sports games simply don’t make sense with that interface.
There remains a glimmer of hope, though. I doubt EA would completely abandon the PC sports market, but I really don’t know how they can handle making your standard sports game work on a keyboard and mouse without radically designing the game from the ground up.
Hate Electronic Arts and, in particular, EA Sports? Peter Moore is hoping you might give them a second chance as he plans on changing things to cater to more sports fans than EA Sports already has more access to and also making games easier to play without dumbing them down. That’s not a pledge to higher quality, but it does sound like EA Sports is going to at least be changing things rather than releasing nothing more than a roster update year after years, as the haters would claim.
“We’ve got to bring more people in. We’ve got to grow the sports business…you know, the interface on our games is just too complicated for those folks and we have to change that, and we’re doing a lot of work to do that without dumbing down the games,” he told Next Gen.
“There are a lot of people who know it very well and have never played a videogame. Our biggest challenge right now is getting those people - sports fans - to start wanting to experience an interactive sports experience.”
I think it’s actually an interesting concept. I’d love to play Madden against friends of mine who enjoy football but are intimidated by the concept of playing a game with a 360 or PS3 controller.
“What we’ve got to do to grow the market is bring in the football fans, that own high def TVs, that love football, and yet don’t enjoy our games because they see them as too hard. Now the strategy we have here is to maintain our core consumer, but we’ve also got to go out and captivate the masses.
“You do that by having easier menus, more intuitive gameplay. People are intimidated by the controller. They walk past the TV and if you say ‘hey, do you want to play’, they say ‘No, I just don’t want to make a fool of myself’.
“There are too many buttons and triggers and d-pads. We’ve got to break a lot of that down.”
I’ve got no clue how they accomplish that without simply focusing on the Wii, but I’m very interested.
The leaderboard for the most played games via XBL for the week ending February 9th have surfaced, and the game taking the top spot was CoD4: Modern Warfare. This should come as no surprise to anyone who has played the game, but Halo fans will be a little saddened to know that their hallowed game has lost its crown for the time being. Guitar Hero III beat out Rock Band and surprisingly Assassin’s Creed is still getting a little download lovin’ from 360 users.
Below is the full list courtesy of Major Nelson, where each list is based on global unique users connected to Xbox Live or in the case of Arcade, full versions purchased that week:
LIVE Activity for week of 2/4
Xbox 360 Top Live Titles
Call of Duty 4
Halo 3
Guitar Hero III
Gears of War
Rock Band
Madden NFL 08
Devil May Cry 4 Demo
Assassin’s Creed
Forza Motorsport 2
FIFA 08
Top Arcade Titles (Full Versions)
Poker Smash
Rez HD
Chessmaster Live
Metal Slug 3
UNO
Bomberman LIVE
Sonic The Hedgehog 2
TMNT 1989 Arcade
9 Worms
Marble Blast Ultra
The above arcade list is based on full versions purchased.
In a move that is both unsurprising and disappointing, Electronic Arts announced today that it has extended its exclusive rights deal with the NFL through 2012. The current deal, signed in 2004, was to run through the 2009 season. The amount paid for either the original deal or this extension have never been publically disclosed, but estimates put it at somewhere between $250 and $300 million.
GameDaily Biz was able to speak with former Microsoft exec and current EA Sports head Peter Moore about the new deal. Moore talks about how EA wants to do more with the NFL than just Madden, and even more than Head Coach and NFL Tour. Periods of time like after the Super Bowl, around the draft and training camp are all lulls for EA in the football department and they want that to change.
Of particular interest were Moore’s comments made when asked what he would say to those who believe having a single choice is the best option for gamers. (Emphasis is ours)
This deal allows us to invest. The key is to make sure we’re in a position to invest aggressively in making the most innovative game. Madden this year has been our best game in three years. Our MetaCritic ratings are the best that we’ve had since the 2006 version. As we move forward, it doesn’t stop anyone from doing another football game as 2K proved this past season (with All Pro Football). At the same time, obviously, the ability for us to use the teams, the players, the stadiums and all of the official marks is important.
Let us not forget that this deal was at the NFL’s directive. They wanted to have an exclusive arrangement. This was not EA coming in and demanding exclusive rights. The NFL put their license out for tender and we bid, as well as many other companies did at the time…I wasn’t here at the time but I remember it very well. I think if the product we put out this year was slipping in quality and innovation, we might have a tougher platform to defend, but that’s not the case. I think the message to gamers is, “Look, we continue to enjoy an incredibly rich relationship with the NFL. We’ve invested hundreds of millions of dollars in R&D over this period of time, in not just Madden but with other things we’re trying to do.”
While I understand what he’s saying, I still feel like competition is what caused Madden 08 to be so much better than the previous years. Without competition, both the 06 and 07 versions of Madden on the 360 and PS3 felt like they had little effort behind them. But, as soon as All Pro 2K8 showed its face, EA really stepped it up. Perhaps it’s simply me being jaded as a longtime, diehard fan of the NFL 2K games, but I still don’t like companies having exclusive rights to a sport – that goes for baseball, as well, in addition to any and every other sport.
Some might argue that a shake-up among the EA Tiburon staff (the developers of Madden) isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Their wish has been partially fulfilled as David Ortiz, lead producer of Madden, has left EA Tiburon citing family reasons. Bryan Intihar over at 1UP suggests there might be more to it than that, as sources have hinted that Ortiz was frustrated with things internally at EA.
An EA spokesperson released the following statement on Ortiz’s leaving: “David’s been a valuable part of our team at EA Tiburon, and we wish him the best. Dale Jackson, an EA veteran for more than a decade, continues to lead the Madden NFL development team.”
Phil Frazier will take over the reins on the 360 and PS3 versions of Madden, which Ortiz was in charge of. Frazier was heavily involved in the success of Madden last generation, as well as the recent disappointment, NFL Tour.
Last year’s Madden was the first game since EA gobbled up NFL exclusivity that felt like a real step forward; whether that’s due to 2K Sports reappearance on the market with All Pro Football 2K8 is unknown.
Like millions of Americans, yesterday was all about sitting down and watching the Super Bowl with a bag of chips and a jar of dip close at hand. Unlike millions of Americans (I’m guessing), aside from the game, the commercials, and a curiously preserved Tom Petty, I was mostly interested to see if the past week’s simulations run by both Madden 08 and Tecmo Super Bowl would hold true with the Patriots as the winners. To summarize: no, they didn’t. The Giants managed to overtake the Patriots with a touchdown literally at the last minute. Thus, the Patriots’ championship trophy disappeared along with my dreams of finding a fortune teller for placing bets on future sporting events. *Sigh* Guess I’ll have to go back to my old plan of building a time machine out of a Delorean and picking up a sports book from the future to give to my younger self in the past.
For its third fiscal quarter, which ended on December 31, EA posted a net loss of $33 million, compared with a net income of $160 million during the same period the previous year. Despite this, the company saw a 17% increase in revenue compared with the previous year, from $1.28 billion to $1.5 billion.
“This was a record revenue quarter for EA and the single biggest revenue quarter for any third party publisher in our industry,” said CEO John Riccitiello.
Riccitiello went on to say that “short-term pain” is necessary for the company to enhance the quality of internally developed titles. He also said that he’s willing to delay titles to ensure higher quality.
“While we are the third-party quality leader we are not satisfied with where we are,” said Riccitiello. “We did not have any internally developed breakaway titles and no one of EA’s internally developed titles reached a Metacritc rating of 90 or greater.
“This hit us particularly hard in North America where EA faced tough competition on a number of fronts. In North America, excluding EA Partners, our business was essentially flat in a very robust market.
“As anticipated, our calendar year shares were down. Although we hit our numbers and anticipated our share losses, losing share is just not acceptable. Rebuilding share is a top priority.”
And almost as if he was trying to give me a quote to back up my claim that he is the guy gamers would want in charge of a company like EA, he said, “When I came back to EA I made a commitment to investing in quality, both because I think it’s the right decision for the long-term financial health of the company and because it is what our consumers have a right to expect.”
In the U.S., the Super Bowl is practically a national holiday…that takes place on Sunday so no one actually gets an extra day off. But if you still haven’t placed your bets on who will win this year, you may want to consider a recent test EA decided to run. Using their game, Madden 08, EA ran a simulation pitting the New England Patriots against the the New York Giants using their current rosters and stats. And the winner? *Drumroll sound* The Patriots by a narrow margin of 38-30. Granted this is all a simulation being run just for fun, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the outcome were different if it were run again. Personally, I’ll still be rooting for my favorite Super Bowl team: the commercials (Woo! Go, beer ads!).
These days, great music and video games seem to go hand in hand. There are of course the more obvious examples like the soundtracks for the Guitar Hero games and Rock Band, but in recent years it seems many sports titles have provided an opportunity for lesser-known bands to gain a fresh audience. One such band is Jupiter One.
If you’ve played an EA sports title in the past few months, odds are you’ve heard at least one of their songs. Named after a supposedly ill-fated spaceship from the Lost in Space TV show, this New York-based band has made a name for themselves with their energetic indie style. Their tracks appeared in a hat trick of popular games in the past few months, including Madden 08, FIFA 08, and NHL 08. Now that Burnout Paradise will also be including one of their songs, we thought we’d ask them a few questions about what it’s like to have their music served up with video games. Read the full article
I’m always happy when the NPD numbers are released, and instead of just getting a single month’s worth of data, we’ve gotten a list of the top ten selling games of 2007, as well as total sales figures on the major hardware for the year. Let’s dive in.
Top 10 Selling Games of 2007:
Halo 3 (Xbox 360) – 4.82 million
Wii Play w/ remote (Wii) – 4.12 million
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Xbox 360) – 3.04 million
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (PlayStation 2) – 2.72 million
Super Mario Galaxy (Wii) – 2.52 million
Pokemon Diamond (Nintendo DS) – 2.48 million
Madden NFL 08 (PlayStation 2) – 1.90 million
Guitar Hero 2 (PlayStation 2) – 1.89 million
Assassin’s Creed (Xbox 360) – 1.87 million
Mario Party 8 (Wii) – 1.82 million
As disappointed as I am, not seeing The Orange Box make the list, I didn’t really expect it would. BioShock headlines my list of games I’m surprised didn’t make the list along with one other game I’m really shocked by – Pokemon Pearl. To not make the list, it had to sell less than the 1.82M that Mario Party 8 did, which means that Diamond sold a minimum of about 700,000 more units than Pearl – maybe more. I would never have guessed that there could be such a discrepancy between the two, but I’m no better – I refused to buy Pearl because I preferred the exclusive Pokemon found in Diamond.
And how about Guitar Hero 2, after being released in 2006, making the list?
For the most part, the top 10 best selling games of November and December are almost exactly the same, save for a few small items. For the second straight month, the Xbox 360 version of Call of Duty 4 was the top selling game with Super Mario Galaxy coming in at number two. Mixed into the rest is what you would expect: big new releases and Madden. Activision ended up with three titles in the top ten which makes the merger with Vivendi all the more frightening for the rest of the games industry.
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Xbox 360) – 1,470,000
Super Mario Galaxy (Wii) – 1,400,000
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (PlayStation 2) – 1,250,000
Wii Play w/ Remote (Wii) – 1,080,000
Assassin’s Creed (Xbox 360) – 893,700
Halo 3 (Xbox 360) – 742,700
Brain Age 2 (Nintendo DS) – 659,500
Madden NFL 08 (PlayStation 2) – 655,200
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (Xbox 360) – 624,600
Mario and Sonic: Olympic Games (Wii) – 613,000
I’m done talking about Wii Play at this point; I just view it as a perpetual lock for the top 10 every month until Nintendo releases a new bundle or the Wii loses steam. Super Mario Galaxy doing well is no surprise, but I was pretty shocked to see Brain Age 2 make the list. Given that the Brain and training games are more geared towards a Japanese audience, I didn’t expect to see the game sell nearly so well.
Mario and Sonic hasn’t been reviewed particularly well, but slapping those two names onto a game on a console that sells so well is bound to produce results. I’m only surprised it didn’t sell more than it did.
Halo and Madden were almost certainly high on many folks’ wishlist, so seeing them sell well in December is a given. One little somewhat unsurprising nugget: despite selling a million units in the month, the PSP didn’t have a single game on the top 10 list.
My curiosity has been piqued by Guitar Hero III’s disappearance in November on 360 (while the Wii and PS2 versions made the top 10), only to see it reappear this month with no Wii version to be seen.
Major Nelson has posted up a few lists of interest on his blog detailing the most played Xbox 360 and Xbox 1 games on Xbox Live, as well as the most purchased Xbox Live Arcade games from 2007. Unsurprisingly, Halo 3 and Halo 2 dominate the first two lists, while TMNT 1989 Arcade was the most purchased Arcade game of the year. I thought I was alone in loving that game prior to its release on XBLA.
Top Xbox 360 Games (Unique Users)
Halo 3
Gears of War
Call of Duty 4
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas
Call Of Duty 3
Crackdown
Oblivion
Guitar Hero II
Forza Motorsport 2
Lost Planet
Call of Duty 3? Really? I found that one to be pretty shocking considering how terrible I’d argue the game is. Apparently, people don’t seem to care, and so long as you’ve got a popular name attached to the game, people will play it. (Why do I get the feeling that saying that is just begging someone to bring Madden up in the comments?)
Posted by William on Monday, December 31st, 2007 at 3:10 pm under Madden
If you are looking to prove your Madden skills, there’s no better way to do than to put your money where your mouth is and get involved in some Madden tournaments. These guys hold tournaments every week in the Michigan area during the NFL season. If you live anywhere close to a city, odds are there is a similar regular tournament going on.
Gaming Steve has posted a list of New Year’s resolutions for a variety of game developers, publishers, systems, games and persons that’s sure to get a chuckle or two. (Which consequently means a fanboy cringe or two.) Everything from Take Two to Blizzard to the PSP is on the list, although the actual likelihood of even a fraction of these resolutions panning out isn’t quite as great as the list.
Here’s a sampling:
Blizzard: I resolve to stop making people totally nuts and finally announce Diablo III.
Valve: I resolve to release the next Half Life 2 Episode before 2010.
Electronic Arts: I resolve to not to milk BioWare to death and have them produce no more than one game per year … or two … and only very occasionally three. But never more than four games a year, I promise.
I picked out those three with the hope they, in particular, come true. I’d settle for one of the three, though.
This is your civic duty (or whatever the gamer equivalent would be called) – you must save the Community Choice Awards being held at Xbox.com. Voting in a number of categories is being held in the Xbox.com forums, and is open to anyone with a gamertag. You might be wondering why the awards need saving; well, I’ll tell you why.
Best weapon, Gravity Hammer (Halo 3) with 43.4% over the Portal gun with 28.2%? What in the gaming gods’ name is going on here? I don’t think you understand how horrified I am when browsing the current results. Halo 3’s Brute Chopper is right on the heels of the AC-130 from Call of Duty 4. I’m so close to having a complete breakdown and losing any and all hope in the gaming community, you wouldn’t even believe it.
Please, oh please, if you have a gamertag, go and vote for the things that deserve to be voted for. You can find the details here and the polls are located in the forums here.
You heard it right. EA has released Madden NFL 08 in Spanish. The Spanish version is being released for the Xbox 360 and PS2. For this cover, Vince Young is out and Charger’s defensive star Luis Castillo is in. The game plays identical to the English version, with the only changes being several new music tracks, a different cover and the entire game being in Spanish.
The interesting aspect of this release is that it marks the first time in history that a a major game publisher is directly marketing a game towards Spanish-speaking gamers only. I’m sure if things go well, we will see more things like this happen next year. I may even pick this up for myself to brush up on my Spanish. Playing Madden would definitely be a fun way to brush up on my foreign language skills.
Those of you who are looking forward to the North American release of The Witcher tomorrow may be interested in a recent editorial on Rock, Paper, Shotgun that endeavors to answer the question “Which sort of RPG is the Witcher?” The key here is defining the prime elements of an RPG. For example, is a game considered an RPG if you can’t create your own character?
Weighing in personally, this was something that came up on last week’s podcast. Ron and I debated the impact of MMORPG’s and the question of what makes an RPG was high on our list of debates. With most games containing elements of traditional RPG mentality - like statistic leveling, skill advancement, etc. it’s becoming harder and harder to draw a straight line in any genre. Oblivion is in many ways a fantasy FPS, but we classify it as an RPG. Consider that the latest Tiger Woods could in many ways be considered an RPG in its career mode - you develop and train up your golfer by playing, choose appearance, etc. Aspects of games that traditionally would be considered an RPG. The question becomes more how the “story” is told and what the aim of the gameplay is that keeps anyone from calling that game or Madden an RPG.
The debate is one that is a hot topic in the video game industry. Check out many of the definitions of RPG on Rock, Paper, Shotgun. For another take on RPGs download the latest File-n-Forget podcast, “Multiple Roles, Singular Worlds”.
I’ve only spent a few hours with The Witcher at this point and I’d call it a great example of an RPG. It has a strong central plot, a character whose skills and abilities develop at my whim and through my actions, and character advancement that is integral to telling the story of the game and directly tied to gameplay.
There was never any doubt Halo 3 would do well, and that it would top the list of games sold in September – September 25 release date or not. Despite having a short period of time to sell, you could look at these numbers and mistake them for annual numbers – Halo 3 sold an astonishing 3.3 million units. That’s a number Dr. Evil would be proud of.
Here are the software numbers for September:
Halo 3 (Xbox 360) - 3.3 million
Wii Play w/ remote (Wii) - 282,000
The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (Nintendo DS) - 224,000
Madden NFL 08 (PlayStation 2) - 205,000
Skate (Xbox 360) - 175,000
Madden NFL 08 (Xbox 360) - 173,000
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (Wii) - 167,000
BioShock (Xbox 360) - 150,000
Brain Age 2 (Nintendo DS) - 141,000
Heavenly Sword (PlayStation 3) - 139,000
As you can see, everything not named Halo 3 pretty much struggled during September, although half of the games on this list weren’t even released in September.
Wii Play unsurprisingly continues to be a hot seller, and considering more than 500k Wii systems were sold in September, it isn’t surprising to see those new owners wanted a second Wiimote to go along with the system. The three other Nintendo platform games that made the list are all Nintendo-published. Note to third parties: Step it up on Wii.
Madden on PlayStation 2 and Xbox 360 swapped places from August, with the PlayStation 2 version now being the bigger seller. This is where you’ll see the huge install base of the PS2 kick in, as there are tens of millions of PlayStation 2 owners who still don’t own Madden 08. The Xbox 360 isn’t even owned by tens of millions in this country.
Skate will be hard to judge until we get the numbers back on the new Tony Hawk, which I suspect will murder the 175k sold by Skate. But for a new IP, that’s a fairly respectable number.
Heavenly Sword truly had a disappointing showing. With no Warhawk or Lair to be seen, it’s the lone PlayStation 3 title to make the list with its 139k units sold. While the game received a rather mixed reception by critics, it certainly seemed like a great time for the PlayStation 3 to have a showcase game release. But as I said with the hardware, it’s quite possible those potential buyers were swept up into the Halo 3 hysteria. That number doesn’t bode well for games like Stranglehold for PS3 which continue to get pushed back further and further – if a borderline triple-A title can’t sell well in a month with no other real significant PS3 releases, how could a multiplatform game do well on the system with the smallest install base?
A curious omission was made last week by EA Sports when they announced the release date for this year’s Madden NFL 09 and revealed some of the details on NFL Head Coach 09 and the 20th anniversary collector’s edition of Madden – there was no word on a PC version. Peter Moore confirmed the news in a post on his EA 
Like millions of Americans, yesterday was all about sitting down and watching the Super Bowl with a bag of chips and a jar of dip close at hand. Unlike millions of Americans (I’m guessing), aside from the game, the commercials, and a curiously preserved Tom Petty, I was mostly interested to see if the past week’s simulations run by both 
For its third fiscal quarter, which ended on December 31, EA posted a net loss of $33 million, compared with a net income of $160 million during the same period the previous year. Despite this, the company saw a 17% increase in revenue compared with the previous year, from $1.28 billion to $1.5 billion.
Gaming Steve has posted a list of New Year’s resolutions for a variety of game developers, publishers, systems, games and persons that’s sure to get a chuckle or two. (Which consequently means a fanboy cringe or two.) Everything from Take Two to Blizzard to the PSP is on the list, although the actual likelihood of even a fraction of these resolutions panning out isn’t quite as great as the list.
