[CM Hooe]

Quote: Originally Posted by GiantBlue76

The problem with this view point is that it is from the "I'm a developer" POV. Anyone who actually does software development (and in your case, games) is going to empathize with this situation. However, you can't expect consumers to give a rat's *** about that.

Completely valid.

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The only reason why they can actually pull this off and use those excuses is because there is no other game. [...] After all, what is the average consumer to do, go buy the "other" football game?

With respect to competition - my stance on this is "the consumer may choose to not buy Madden" as there are plenty of other AAA console video games to try if Madden isn't up to whatever purchasing standards they hold. I highly recommend Bioshock Infinite, for example. Heck, there are other football-themed video games to try on non-console platforms; Football Heroes on mobile, Goal Line Blitz MMO on the web, Professional Football Simulator or any other PC text-sim... and so on.

My stance most likely is not the popular stance, and certainly not popular with respect to the NFL exclusivity arrangement (which I'm not happy with either, for the record), because people here want to play an NFL football video game on a console and aren't satisfied with Madden. However, the lay of the land is as it is, we play the cards we're dealt. There are still consumer options; the specific option all of us would like to have isn't there, but there are options nevertheless.

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Many people realize what has happened here, including myself. They basically squandered a decade of football gaming and now we have a massive pile of dung that they need to un-screw. It's difficult to do, takes a long time and no one is going to be happy, but hey, that's their (Tiburon's) own fault.

Also agreed that any legacy issues created out of bad design decisions and implementations from past games - in my opinion, Maddens 06 through 08 and possibly 09 - are going to take time to correct. It's my opinion that this correction has been ongoing and quite readily evident since Madden 10 inclusive, and I've been happy with each Madden purchase I've made compared to all other then-available options since that point; reasonable minds will differ here.

I guess ultimately, with respect to the post of mine you quoted about my opinions on Madden's scoping: at this point I just don't see what Madden NFL is and has been doing differently as a series from any other modern year-over-year sports game - or given how that genre appears to works now for the most part, console first-person shooters. The games are developed iteratively and from my vantage point I'm seeing more-or-less the same amount of forward progress from the previous version to the next compared to other year-over-year iterations of other series. Thus, speaking as a consumer and not a developer here as much as I realistically am able, I don't understand how the "not enough" criticism is justified to that end. The only difference I is the relative starting points; again I personally thought the first three Maddens on Gen7 were pretty bad. If that initial gap Madden is still working to close (given that other sports games have been moving forward as Madden played catch-up) is the totality of the difference, then I understand.