EA Sports
In 1988, a video game dubbed John Madden Football was released for the personal computers that had become a bit of a novelty at the time a couple of years before the title landed with a splash on the SEGA Genesis and SNES.
The franchise most people refer to simply as “Madden” initially had a bit of competition thanks to Tecmo Bowl, but that changed in 1993 when EA Sports secured the rights to use real, actual NFL franchises and players in the games to set the company up for a future where it would cement itself as the premier producer of football video games.
In 2004, it also became the only company that could make an NFL game after it signed a contract with the league that granted it the exclusive rights to its teams and related properties. People who grew up playing Madden during what is arguably its Golden Era probably look back at that moment in time fairly fondly, but it didn’t take long for things to start falling apart.
It’s been close to two decades since a company that isn’t EA Sports has made an NFL-sanctioned title (although that could be changing soon), and longtime fans of Madden are likely all too aware that lack of competition has resulted in EA Sports getting fairly complacent with a series where features have been routinely gutted while developers fail to adequately address the embarrassing glitches that plague basically every installment.
As things currently stand, anyone who plays (or, perhaps more accurately, subjects themself to) Madden year after year has become accustomed to an annual cycle that involves EA Sports promising some “revolutionary” new features that largely fail to live up to that label while hoping slightly improved cosmetics will distract from the internal rot that’s becoming almost impossible to ignore.
Last week, Insider Gaming published a report after speaking with multiple sources at EA Sports who claimed the publisher is placing some particular importance on the development of Madden 24, which has been described as a “make or break” release.
It appears the company has realized it can no longer simply rely on the goodwill it’s steadily eroded since Madden hit its peak in the mid-2000s, as it’s hoping to redeem itself in the wake of a snafu involving the widespread corruption of Franchise Mode files by *gasp* focusing on offline and single-player features that have been neglected in favor of the much more lucrative Ultimate Team.
Given EA Sport’s lengthy track record of overpromising and underwhelming when it comes to Madden, this should probably be taken with a grain of salt. With that said, when you consider these rumors stem from internal concerns that employees are worried about their job security if Madden 24 fails to meet expectations, they may actually have some major incentive to innovate.