Here's why I buy the new 'Madden' game every single year

Every year, EA Sports comes out with a new edition of its super popular "Madden NFL" game. And I've bought each new version since 2010.

I'm not unlike a lot of people. Many Madden fans buy the new game each year, even if it may seem like very little has changed.

But the question is why?

ere's why I buy the new 'Madden' game every single year

[GreetingsfromCanada]

None of those are really good reasons.

[TFJWM]

The only time I buy Madden these days is if my team makes it to the Super Bowl. Then I play it for a month or two and don't touch it again usually =\

[NoFanboyJustLovGames]

well they are good reasons if you a football fan and a madden fan... it shows the difference every year.... but some dont justify 60 bucks

[LAWSON72]

I am going to take a wild guess you like football and.... the NFL

[ShinMaster]

You could seriously release 1 Madden game every 5 years and sustain it with updates/DLC each year.
It's not worth $60 every single time.

[WilliamSheridan]

The menu system? What about the new passing system, the new catching options, the improved gameplay. Whoever wrote this just wants clicks, and isn't very concerned with their writing ability.

[jmc8888]

Horrible reasons. As a person who USED to buy every Madden, back when it was WORTH IT to, 1992-2001 (but I bought it from '92-06), it got to the point where it wasn't different enough.

Early on you had 92-93 Genesis, 94-95 SNES... this era there was some good improvements. Then we had '96 on the Sega Saturn. Once again the graphics were much better..A HUGE jump. Let me put it this way. From 95 on the SNES to 96 on Saturn was FAR bigger then PS3/360 to PS4/XB1 jump. Then they did it AGAIN the VERY NEXT YEAR, with another jump that surpasses last gen to this gen with the Saturn to N64 jump.

Madden 64 was a massive improvement. In fact, I loved making 7 foot 400 lb rb's and they would crush the defense and injure them. You know what, for all the 'physics' improvements, that version, and that version alone stands out at the top... because size and weight ACTUALLY MATTERED.

I mean c'mon, with all these supposed 'physics' improvements, if I make a 7 foot fat guy now, he gets taken down like he's a feather by a 5'8, 180lb CB... it's SOOOO unrealistic. In other words, the physics thing... still sucks, and you still see guys reacting late to some of the 'physics', making those animations look like a flop in basketball.

Then in '98 I went to PC version, and once again it was a bigger jump then we saw from PS3/360 to PS4/XB1. THREE YEARS IN A ROW.

From '99-02 the jumps were smaller, but still the improvements they made were massive comparatively to today.

'03-05 were the first ones that seemed like basically a roster updated, but I bought the '05 because I just got another PC rig. It obviously was more fluid, but it kind of sucked that it was still the same game.

So then '06, we get the first one on 360. Madden 360. Oh god, they slapped that together with bubble gum and tape. Was worse then my previous year's PC version, and had half the content stripped out of it. Hell that REALLY SAD thing is... the helmet reflections WERE ON THE PS2 version... but not the much more powerful 360 version!

At that point I had enough. Do I buy one every few years? Yep. Usually used. But I did buy Madden 25 (traded it in) and '15... kept. The graphics STILL SUCK. The first next gen version was basically the same thing as before but at a higher resolution. This past year in '15, they did their BIGGEST GRAPHICAL JUMP in about 15 years... and it still looks like crap. Better? Yes. But that's not saying much.

It still looks like a small dev's game from 2007 graphically. But you see, their previous games looked like something out of 2001-2002, so it was a decent jump. From a 1 out of 10 graphically to a 3 out of 10.

[Shineon]

Don't you just miss when the NFL license wasn't exclusive and we could buy all games like NFL Fever NFL Quaterback club NFL 2K and NFL GameDay.Those were the days of competition 10 years ago that died and NFL video gaming

[jmc8888]

Basically all EA did was pay the NFL for a monopoly on the license and do nothing with it. That's what they did. As soon as they got that, they went in the tank. New console? Who cares, we'll just slap something together. We say we're making the graphics GREAT? Here's some 2007 low budget character models for you. Physics? Let's just not do anything about the different height, weight of the players....

Let's make it more difficult with the QB vision cam, then they rebranded it some other crap. Then they throw in all this other crap so you can't throw on the run, and you can't pass deep really anymore. They call it 'more realistic'. Screw that. They change the stuff you DON'T want to change, and call it realistic, and DON'T CHANGE the stuff YOU DO WANT CHANGED, or half-butt it and not really accomplish anything.

What's really sad is that some people today, they don't know HOW to judge things. They get this lip service crap and think... see that's a valid reason to buy it. Look at the above, and if I sat here and thought about it, I could give detailed examples of how each of these leaps were massive.

It's not about 'computing power', or 'diminishing returns'. They had the power, they decided not to. They see what everyone else is doing for the past 10 years with character models, and proceed to pretend like it's still 10 years ago.

So if someone wants to see what they used to be like when they tried... then compare that to spin they give you every year this year... you notice a massive difference, and the difference is, they don't try and haven't for a long time. These pathetic examples of 'upgrades' are pitiful.

You put all those upgrades mentioned in the article, from all those versions, and you used to get so much more that then EVERY YEAR, and sometimes lots more then even that.

It's sad when it took them until the PS4/XB1 launched for them to have the game in 1080p, considering they USED to have that on the PC version up through Madden '08. So for '09 until Madden 25, they actually went DOWN in resolution. So sad.

There USED to be a VALID time to buy Madden every year. It hasn't been that time since before the Iraq war started.

[iceman06]

THIS!!! Madden is just a Frankenstein monster of football...with pieces taken from itself and other games yearly. The problem is that, when they take the good pieces, they often are replaced within a year by some "other" aspect of football that they choose to focus on.
Sadly, Madden has existed by selling football a la carte for the last 10 years. This year we'll give you a QB...then a running back...then the defense...then the wide receivers. Once again, each year seemingly removing the "improvements" from the previous year. But, that's what happens when there is only a game from a decade ago to really compare it to.

[James-GAMES]

Unless you're a hardcore football fan it's really hard to justify buying Madden every year.

[fxa5209]

I will take another guess, this guys is paid to promote the game.

[gnothe1]

this game has some improvements...but at its core its still MADDEN..a broken piece of crap with repeated animations and an unrealistic attempt at trying to mimic the game of football...but its the only way I can play football so I'm stuck with it...