06-27-2011, 05:26 PM
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#3
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MVP
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Re: Is madden building on a broken foundation?
As I've said often before, the problem is simple: money. Back in the day, Madden had to compete for the football video game market. To compete, you need to make a superiour product (or better, a product the consumer considers superious) than the competition, that costs money.
When Madden gained the exclusive license, that competition was gone. Since american football IS the NFL, there simply is no room for a major market share for a non-NFL game, much as I'd like to see one succeed. But 90% of all customers surely wouldn't even think of buying a football game without those magical three letters on the cover. So EA was in the comfortable situation to be able to release a game that's pretty much the same as last year's installment, as long as the rosters are accurate, it looks a little bit better and the game is at least playable, people will buy it.
So do you throw more money than necessary after a game that will sell anyway? Of course not, this is a business, after all. EA isn't there to make games as great as possible, it's there to make as much profit off of those games as possible.
The problem is that I'm quite sure the Madden budget was already seriously downsized by the time next gen came around. Making a new game costs a lot more money than just updating another one, and since there was no reason to spend money (because there were no other next gen football game to compete with), it's easy to see how the engine for next gen was probably not as well made as could have been possible with more funds (and thus, more manpower)
Since the exclusive license is here to stay, thinking that EA will really "go back to the drawing board" seems pretty naive to me. Going back to the drawing board costs a LOT more money than just building on what you have, so no, I'm quite sure we won't see a new engine or anything like that before the next generation of gaming system makes that necessary.
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