John Madden goes “Boom!’ again this week, even though the hall-of-fame NFL broadcaster hung up his microphone years ago. Electronic Arts’ enormously popular NFL video game franchise, Madden NFL, drops Madden 15 on eager gamers on Tuesday. The franchise has made billions for EA and no small amount of pocket change for John Madden either. The game hardly has any competition–and NFL Football has become far and away the most popular professional sport in America.
Now the Madden franchise shifts to next-gen consoles PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, which USA Today‘s Brett Molina says has gone smoothly. Molina continues with the faint praise, calling the “on-field experience in Madden NFL 15 is consistently solid” and saying it “looks even more lifelike.” Consistently solid players, BTW, are trade bait. The lifelike is to be expected given technological advances. Thing is, Madden doesn’t have to do anything as great as Ken Stabler did to satisfy its loyal players. It’s really very good already and it’s the only game in town.
Note: The three top rated players this year, according to the EA Sports official website, are J.J. Watt (Texans), Calvin Johnson (Lions) and Richard “I told you I was the best” Sherman (Seahawks)–each has an overall rating of 99. Sherman is on the cover, too. (Peyton Manning and Adrian Peterson only rate 98s.)
