What's holding Madden back? Why doesn't it have a 90+ rating on Metacritic?

[Cutwolf]

Are you asking what's holding it back from a development or business standpoint, or from an in-game standpoint?

The former: no incentive to innovate. They could release the exact same game and just emphasize lesser known features already in the current game as if they're new and people would buy it en masse. Releasing a yearly roster update and charging $60 is a lot more profitable than actually putting serious development resources into the game. Madden is the McDonalds of sports franchises.

The latter: Oh boy, where to start?

- Awful commentary
- Canned animations (no reason with tech like Euphoria out there animations should be canned). This is huge to me.
- Behind-the-scenes dice game. A fumble isn't your fault. A dropped pass isn't your fault. So on and so forth. Not sure how to fix this, but when I win or lose because of something I had little control over, it's awful.
- Awful defensive AI.
- Unrealistic line play. See how an offensive line plays against a 3-4 defense. If they played that way in real life, the pocket is going to collapse faster than the stock market after a Bernanke speech.
- Weak crowds
- Weak team specific crowd/sound details (ie no "Renegade" in Heinz Field in a close game?)
- Lack of real customization
- Vague, but lack of emotion. Lifeless players, crowds, sidelines, commentators, refs, etc.

I can go on and on.

[docolla]

The reason why Madden isn't as good as we'd like is because there's no competition, regardless what they put out every year people still buy the game cause it's the only football game out there. They can just recycle ideas from their past, poorly put them together then patch them later and people will still buy this sorry excuse for a game. Until they have to compete for your money expect the same product year in and year out.

[gamecockfan40]

bottom line is, EA just don't care...They don't have no reason to make the game any better with 2k gone & no one other to put heat on EA....Until 2013 and see if NFL is that dang dumb to give it to EA is yet to be seen, But if NFL does we all should just give up on MADDEN...It's hard for my to think if EA get NFL for 10 more years, Our new next gen systems won't be worth getting, if you are a football fan, Cause it will take 10 plus years on next gen system for EA to get it right...Yea the first madden on new system will be fun cause it's new, but after that....EA will SUCK!!!!!!!! once again

[scoonie05]

Lol, somebody is mad. LOL