I cannot recall the last time that I didn’t purchase the yearly Madden roster update; I’m certain it has been forever and a day! Two weeks and a day into the release of the 25th anniversary release of Madden, I feel no remorse for not shelling out a few duckets to EA Sports; not even a twinge of doubt or uncertainty about missing out on a new football game.
A few years ago (back in 2009 to be exact) I famously decided to pass on NCAA Football 10. Surprisingly it was actually a difficult decision. Not to trivialize people with serious addictions, but purchasing the annual EA Sports franchise updates is an illness. I survived, which probably allowed me to enjoy NCAA Football 12 and to a lesser extent, NCAA Football 13.
In my opinion NCAA Football 13 was only marginally more interesting than the previous year’s update, so once again I decided to sit on the sidelines. I cannot imagine that EA Sports went all out making their newest PS3 version of NCAA Football compelling when they could be working their way out of various lawsuits.
Not to digress too much, but enough is pretty much enough, which has carried over into Madden. I may look towards a PS4 Madden 25 purchase, but that is still in the air. As it stands now, I can still play last year’s Madden 13 and be perfectly content. For now … until the PS4 Madden itch kicks in …
I have a preorder for the PS4, with Madden and FIFA.
I don’t have a gaming PC so these games should be a decent upgrade graphically, though the jump from this to the Xbox1 and PS4 is not as great as previous generations.
But there’s a lot of discontent about some of the Madden videos which have appeared. I’d like to try playing a football game again — I’ve kind of drifted away from consoles, playing simpler games on my iPad and iPhone the last couple of years.
If the initial user reviews are poor, I may return one of them.
The NBA2K14 graphics look great, like the closeup of LeBron. However, when you watch the videos, the painted on eyes look creepy. Uncanny Valley at work.
I still haven’t decided on my preorder list. Almost certainly FIFA since I have really enjoyed the PS3 version this year. Killzone … just because it looks like the best of the PS4 exclusives. Still have 12 days to figure it out …
I have Madden and FIFA as part of my PS4 preorder with Best Buy.
Supposedly, on launch, Target will have Buy 2, Get 1 Free sale for PS4 games.
Also, Best Buy may follow suit.
I’m not going to risk changing my preorder so I’ll probably return the games and re-buy them, though to be honest, the next-gen versions of Madden aren’t getting noticed like the previews shown for NBA2K.
Sony Store here has a demo of the PS4 going. One of the games was FIFA, which on first look really didn’t pop out like it was much better.
But they had PS3 FIFA running right next to it and if you looked between the two, the PS3 version looks like a blurry mess at times. It’s not that the PS4 version is so outstanding, just cleaner.
So far, two of the bigger cross-platform games are looking better on the PS4. Call of Duty Ghosts is 720p on the Xbox One and 1080p on the PS4. Battlefield 4 is also 720p rendered (upscaled to 1080p) on the X1 and 900p rendered on the PS4.
Journalists went to some event in Sweden and said that the PS4 version of Battlefield 4 looked crisper.
However, EA Sports may be more cozy with Microsoft. They are touting Coach Glass for the X1 version of Madden which will show play diagrams that your opponents called in the game on an iPad.
re, EA Sports may be more cozy with Microsoft. Yep, and at some point in this new generation that may be a problem for Sony. So far they have done everything right, and allowed MS to shoot their system in the foot during the preorder period. Still, from a US market point of view, it will be close. Even if Sony is “winning” they cannot “win” if the major third party developers/publishers throw bones to MS and not to Sony. i.e. EA with your example, Titian Fall, and there are probably others.
I tend to shy away from military shooters – cuts too deep for me, but I am strongly considering picking up Kill Zone just because it is the “main” PS4 exclusive at launch.