
The inside story of how Madden NFL became a video game dynasty - Tomte
http://espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=100805/madden
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wldcordeiro
They bought the exclusive contract to the NFL when they faced a challenge from
2K games. That's how this dynasty stays around.

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aab0
I don't think that's adequate, that explanation is buck-passing. The NFL
doesn't care about Madden or EA, it just cares about making money; if someone
else offered it more money, they'd sell the license to them. So why has EA
been able to keep paying the NFL's bill and keep the fanbase to pay it off? It
looks like they've been able to build a brand, and have invested a ton in
constant finetuning and additional football-nerd details that a competitor
would have serious difficulty in living up to in the first iteration of any
AAA competing football game, combined with an annual iteration which means
that with the usual 3 year development cycle, any competitor would be obsolete
quickly.

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ben_jones
For one EA is ~3 times the size of Take Two interactive (parent of parent of
2k sports). Logic would dictate they just out bid on the rights to Madden each
and every year.

I've bought Madden every year up to 2015 and personally call bull shit on the
idea that EA has continually added value to the franchise. They've added
Ultimate team, a feature that lets users purchase players and bet on online
games (it uses virtual currency so it's not gambling right!), as well as a
handful of small feature improvements year over year... that's it. The biggest
sell year on end is roster updating and graphics tweaks.

TLDR; used to buy Madden every year, now I categorically don't.

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aab0
> For one EA is ~3 times the size of Take Two interactive (parent of parent of
> 2k sports). Logic would dictate they just out bid on the rights to Madden
> each and every year.

That is _still_ not an explanation. If Take Two Interactive can _make_ more
money off a NFL-licensed game than EA can, then the NFL will go with them; and
if EA pays more for the NFL license than EA can make, then they are losing
money each year, and potentially an enormous and crippling amount. There is no
evidence they are bleeding constantly like you seem to postulate.

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joezydeco
There's this odd little rumor/story that gets passed around from time to time
that Madden, deep down in the core of its object code, is still running the
SNES game engine from the 1990s.

From a blog somewhere else:

 _" Madden 2015 has a long, dark history. Inside its inmost code, there's a
tiny copy of snes9x, linked to a tiny virtual display, used only in memory,
never shown to the user. This arrangement has been used to drive every version
of Madden since John Madden Football 97, although the emulator then was a
custom job written (poorly) by EA."_

~~~
munificent
I worked on Madden for several years. It would be delightful and hilarious if
that were true.

There is some _very_ old code in there, or at least was when I was on it. I
recall digging up the code that updated your score on a touchdown—not a bit of
logic that has much need to change—and saw Steve Chiang's initials on it, from
back when he still coded.

One obvious sign is that it's a fake is that there's no way there would be a
_shitty_ emulator in Madden. Icer Addis, the creator of Nesticle, worked on
Madden for years and wouldn't have tolerated that. If there was an emulator,
it would be a good one.

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frogpelt
Answer me this: why does the opponent wait until 2 minutes left in the game to
do an onsides kick and then they will do it even if I'm ahead by 6 touchdowns?

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joobus
FTA: "In 2004, EA paid the NFL a reported $300 million-plus for five years of
exclusive rights to teams and players. The deal was later extended to 2013.
Just like that, competing games went kaput."

They became a monopoly.

~~~
thomnottom
The 2K football games were superior at the time. Then they dropped their price
significantly ($20 for 2k5 after 2k4 was a success) and EA decided they
couldn't compete. So that deal was signed so that they wouldn't have to. And
thus I stopped buying NFL games.

Interesting that ESPN doesn't seem to mention this in the article considering
their name and properties were used for the 2K games.

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gat-bitty
I'd really like to see a Gruden NFL game myself

~~~
daodedickinson
Well maybe you could be the one to figure out how this thing works:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U0azTHBn-E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U0azTHBn-E)

I remember asking my dad how I was supposed to play this when I was about 4...
he didn't know either.

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brandonmenc
While we're on the subject of old football games, no discussion is complete
without mentioning the amazing PlayMaker Football released by Broderbund in
1989 and featured on this episode of Computer Chronicles:
[https://youtu.be/1vMfW32TNo0?t=17m16s](https://youtu.be/1vMfW32TNo0?t=17m16s)

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mixmastamyk
Interesting, I had Madden on the Genesis and enjoyed it a lot. Shortly after
that I got into stocks, too bad I didn't put two and two together.

Now that I think of it, I just played the game at home and had no idea how
popular and financially successful it was.

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dpeck
its always been confusing to me how the NCAA franchise got so little love and
was eventually killed off. It should have been essentially the same engine but
always lagged multiple years behind in functionality.

