[CM Hooe]

Quote: Originally Posted by JimmyK

People often say this, but the shift in those games was pre determined by developers either stripping away a franchise mode of all the features or just removing it. Madden tried removing more and more from franchise to make MUT the go to. One year if anyone remembers they launched franchise without a fantasy draft, which wasn't an accident. They just knew that wouldn't fly and added it back shortly after. If franchises got more attention I think they would be more popular.

The game you speak of, Madden NFL 13, was the first in the series to feature a complete online franchise mode (as opposed to the bare-bones online leagues introduced in Madden NFL 11). Originally called Connected Careers mode, it is now the base of Cloud Franchise and Face Of The Franchise modes.

A lot of Franchise had to get rebuilt from the ground-up to support the game working online, which is why so many features were lost moving from Madden NFL 12 to Madden NFL 13. Nothing about that enormous technical effort was motivated in any way by Ultimate Team.