Digital Sportspage Blog

I wish I could find the article or forum post at OS, where one of the developers said that Madden has a relatively small design team compared with other EA games.

I think that’s the reason by NCAA and Madden are slipping in terms of quality. NCAA and Madden have been been buggy messes. You can debate that having broken zones is bug. But usually the developer that release buggy games was 2k Sports. Things just didn’t work in their games.

In the last few years, we have seen some real issues from this team. In fact, Madden has needed a patch the last three years. Problems like draft classes not working and online issues have been the biggest. But this year’s fix list is incredible from a company that usually releases the most stable games.

Why? The demands of creating a next-gen game is more than Tiburon is allocating. EA Sports won’t do this but Madden needs a budget and team the size of games like Spore, Halo, Call of Duty. EA Sports do not want to commit those type of resources for a game that is released every year. It might not even make that great of a business sense.

Madden is their flagship title and it needs two patches even before it is released. And none of this really matters.

If there was a NFL 2k9, you might see that game steal some of Madden sales. When the exclusive contract was signed, people thought only innovation was to be hampered by the deal. Now it’s that EA Sports knows it can ship with bugs, some huge, that will barely affect sales.

I don’t believe it can do that every year. Madden’s sales have been relatively stagnant since killing off NFL 2k. And there have been some evidence that pre-order for Madden is down. There are signs that Madden is struggling to find new markets and consumers. Older games are being more cautious yet very demanding on Madden.

Yet, Tiburon and EA Sports can stave off all of this by giving Madden the resources it needs.

JRod also runs his own blog — Sensible Coasters.