I'm probably the opposite of you. I don't ever remember being a big fan of Madden. Madden never really brought alot to the table until later on or when the other video games series to bite the dust. When I originally had the Nintendo and Sega Genesis of the world...it was Tecmo Bowl. Who cared about realism....in fact the arcade style was much more preferred, because realism was boring. Tecmo Super Bowl had more dynamic players, exciting gameplay, great music, and those fancy touchdown/interception screens. Next was QB Club, which was kind of fun because of QB Challenge. The first football games to have 3D polygons were Gameday 98' and NFL QB Club 98, personally more of a fan of those two. Madden picked up the same strategies and expanded the realism by adding franchise modes, unique practice sessions, roster updating, heavy promotion, and etc. And people responded. Madden hit an all-time high and the other games slowly faded away. Gameday was still viable, but nowhere near Madden in the millinieum. The 2K series was pretty good and actually had some competition, then EA somehow got an exclusive deal with the NFL. And that pretty much closed the door on all competition for at least the near future.
I haven't really been able to get into Madden games since Madden 2000. I still kept buying the games for whatever reason up until 2005. Haven't bought it since.
Eh, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt there...for now. I wouldn't doubt MS was pushing for something like that, but I think it is just simply a case of EA still not understanding how to develop for both consoles (obviously, more so the PS3). Their next-gen output hasn't exactly been all that great technically speaking, outside of the efforts by Criterion (Burnout) and maybe a few other devs (Dice?). The extra month (IIRC?) of development on FIFA may have helped them get the PS3 version up-to-speed, along with other factors. I thought I read something hinting that they were going to start leading on the PS3 in most of their dev studios, although I might have been reading too much into that (even if it was the case, Tiburon may not do it). I honestly don't understand why more devs don't do this or develop on both simultaneously (like Burnout or COD4 IIRC).
