[ch46647]

When I wrote this post several of the people I expected to chime in here already have. The reason I grew to love these forums is because most of the posters that have been here for a long time all feel the same way about sports games and in particular, Madden. We all just want a great game to enjoy and have fun with. I could just imagine how AMAZING the leagues and CCM could be with guys from this forum if there was a football game made to the quality of many of the other sports titles on the market today.

I am not an overly pessimistic person. While I havent played any of the Madden's over the last few years for more then a couple weeks. I still believe there is hope for the franchise and I believe Tiburon can deliver. I have said this already but I will say it again. I believe that Madden was rushed to push out Madden 06 for the XBOX 360 launch, and in doing so the foundation was an absolute disaster. I also believe that for the first 3 years (06-09) the direction from the leaders at Tiburon was not where it needed to be. However, I DO feel that changed with Ian and his team in 2010. I believe the developers saw how popular "SIM" sports games were becoming and started shifting focus back to what once made them great. (Not that Madden or any sports game was ever completely SIM but Madden was the standard of sports games for a long, long time) But because the foundation was so flawed I do not think the developers can make Madden play how it should without completely re-writing all the code. To make a drastic change like that it would require atleast a year or two to build and they didnt want to lose sales like that. They began just trying to build on top of it, and over the last two years we have seen several things stripped out and "re-built" but the basic foundation of the game is still so flawed that nothing they do can make Madden play like the other great sports games on the market. (NBA 2k, FIFA, The Show, NHL)

That brings us to this year or next when Madden will once again make the jump to a "next gen" system. I am hoping they have learned from their mistakes and behind the scenes they are putting SERIOUS effort and creative thinking into building a foundation for Madden that will blow the sports gaming community away. Quite frankly, they owe us this as many of us have been loyal to Madden and they have been delivering a poor product since 06'. The developers know what makes a great sports game, they've seen other companies do great things, they have phenomenal forums like these, and I am sure they have many great and creative minds in the building as well.

Blow us away Madden team. Blow the entire sports gaming community away. Make me say "WOW" when I put Madden in the tray for the first time on my XBOX 720.