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.”

via GamesIndustry.biz

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!).

Highlights from the simulation can be seen below.

Via Press Release

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:

1. Halo 3 (Xbox 360) – 4.82 million
2. Wii Play w/ remote (Wii) – 4.12 million
3. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Xbox 360) – 3.04 million
4. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (PlayStation 2) – 2.72 million
5. Super Mario Galaxy (Wii) – 2.52 million
6. Pokemon Diamond (Nintendo DS) – 2.48 million
7. Madden NFL 08 (PlayStation 2) – 1.90 million
8. Guitar Hero 2 (PlayStation 2) – 1.89 million
9. Assassin’s Creed (Xbox 360) – 1.87 million
10. 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?

Hardware numbers are after the break.

Read the full article »

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.

1. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Xbox 360) – 1,470,000
2. Super Mario Galaxy (Wii) – 1,400,000
3. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (PlayStation 2) – 1,250,000
4. Wii Play w/ Remote (Wii) – 1,080,000
5. Assassin’s Creed (Xbox 360) – 893,700
6. Halo 3 (Xbox 360) – 742,700
7. Brain Age 2 (Nintendo DS) – 659,500
8. Madden NFL 08 (PlayStation 2) – 655,200
9. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (Xbox 360) – 624,600
10. 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.

That’s almost like …well, it’s like something.

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)

1. Halo 3
2. Gears of War
3. Call of Duty 4
4. Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas
5. Call Of Duty 3
6. Crackdown
7. Oblivion
8. Guitar Hero II
9. Forza Motorsport 2
10. 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?)

The other two lists can be seen after the jump.

Read the full article »

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.

Via Myspace

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.

Check out the full list of resolutions here.