I know that a 512x512 texture takes up four times the memory of a 256x256 texture. I also know that to display a geometry with normal mapping (so that light reflects off it properly) requires an
additional texture, which the PS2 didn't have to store because asking the PS2 to do normal mapping was a non-starter outside of maybe one or two very specific applications. I also know that displaying a game in 4K with high fidelity is going to require some pretty massive textures relative to what we're used to seeing get into a video game. Finally I know some texture dimensions required for custom teams in Madden 08 PC; the largest is the end zone art at 1024x256, helmets were 256x128 at minimum and I believe the game supported 512x256 as well. All these texture sizes have likely at least quadrupled over the past decade as the graphical expectations of consumers have increased with new hardware.
Oldenburg is a gameplay designer so he might not be the most up-and-up on the technical side of things, but I trust someone
inside the building who actually knows about the day-to-day problems of building the video game over the opinion of some armchair quarterback on the internet telling him he's bad at his job. At the
very worst he has his ear on the wall for high-level technical conversations with respect to how far along engineering is implementing systems he helps design.
Not sure why bringing up the crowd in other games is relevant as Madden renders a crowd which is at least partially 3D as well.
1080P and HDR aren't the same thing. One refers to pixel density, the other refers to color space and lighting.
Consoles have been able to output at 1080P since at least the last console generation. Forza Motorsport 2 ran at 1080P native in 2007, for example. I'm reasonable sure Madden on XBOX 360 ran at either 720P or 900P and upscaled to 1080P. Madden 17 certainly runs at 1080P on current-gen hardware, and Tiburon claims that Frostbite will get Madden running in 4K @ 60FPS during gameplay on PS4 Pro / XBOX One X. FIFA 17 achieved that and I saw Madden 18 achieve that with my own eyes at EA PLAY last week, so that's not an unreasonable claim by any means.
You are correct that Madden 17 didn't support HDR; already-released PS4 Pro games required title updates to support that, and M17 never got one. However - and I could be wrong on this - I think HDR is handled by the GPU and it's basically doing some fancy ray-tracing with virtual light rays to produce a more accurate color, and that in-and-of itself doesn't require any more system RAM to achieve (it'd obviously required a better GPU, though). Point being it doesn't have any bearing either way on the issue of getting Pro Bowl helmets into memory.
Incorrect, every time a player makes a hard cut on a field-turf surface there are particle effects spawned from the players cleats. So there's one. Super Bowl confetti would be another. I'm sure there are others, especially with pyrotechnics in player / team intros being a thing now thanks to Frostbite.
I've never played a Battlefield game so I've never downloaded a high-resolution character skin, but I'm a seven-years-experienced client engineer for an independent video game studio so generally speaking I have an inkling as to how these things work.