Electronic Arts Reveals Next-Gen Madden

Tim Grube writes "Electronic Arts has released the very first image of Madden NFL running on the next-generation consoles. This Saturday, on April 23rd, the NFL Draft begins on TV and EA has already scored a promotional commercial to unveil Madden Next-Gen. It will air on ESPN."

Comments

canned movie or real time game footage?

[Anonymous Coward]

notice that EA isn't actually stating that the screenshot is of gameplay, and gamespot is only implying it yet never clearly states either.

So realistic...

[MBraynard]

It will feature fully real-world physics of John Madden's humongous beer gut jiggling!

YES!

[Sebadude]

Now we can see his giant nostrills with infinite detail. Thank you EA.

Re:Newsflash

[MBCook]

I agree to a large degree, but at least we can glean SOME info from this. I won't watch the commercial (it will probably be on the net within a 1/2 hour anyway). Here are the things I would watch for:

• Crowd - Is it just a flat polygon? Sets of flat polygons? Undetailed models? Semi-detailed models? Is there dynamic detail (does it look better up close if the camera zooms in?)
• Players - This is the one to look at. How good do they look? Recent games look quite good, but they could be better. The animation is the biggest problem here. While they may have motion captured realistic running, when you switch from running to jumping for the ball or something like that it is usually quite a noticeable transition. Did they get these smooth? Do the players look very detailed up close?
• Misic - Footsteps in snow for all the players (bonus points if they don't dissapear after 20 steps or so)? Depth blur? Hear blur for hot days? Does the grass look like grass, or a green texture? Having actual grass when they zoom in on the ball or action instead of a green texture would be very cool.

I'm sure people who play these games on any regular basis (I'm not a sports person) could come up with more. Personally I'd like to see a GT4 killer. GT4 looks awesome, but it is still obvious it is a game. Take GT4, make it hi-def, ANTI-ALIAS IT, add damage to the cars, increase the background detail and you could have one FANTASTIC looking game.

Hopefully we'll see more screen shots and movies soon as we get closer to the launches (and the XBox 360 unveiling on the 12th).

And personal note to MS: Don't make a cool looking game like Malice this time, only to release it as a terrible "me too" game 3+ years later.

Actually, sports games are a wonderful benchmark

[BTWR]

There are two possible explanations for you not wanting to see a sports game as the first preview of next-gen systems:

1) You hate sports and/or sports games (a *shocker* on slashdot). Joking aside, this is entirely reasonable. I personally don't much care for RPGs or MMORPGs myself, so I don't get excited when I see those screenshots or 9.7/10 ratings.

2) You simply don't think sports are a good benchmark for system performance.

If it is #2, then I (politely) believe you are entirely mistaken. Put it this way... let's take a beautiful game from this generation: Doom3. The gameplay might have been subpar or perhaps it was too dark or overall not worth the 10 year wait, but it was still pretty. As nice-looking as it was, who the hell knows what a demon from hell looks like? Who knows what a Space Station/whatever is "supposed" to look like?

Sports games, and football in particular, are becoming more-and-more television like. Back in SNES/Genesis days (perhaps before), we first had players looking distinct (real-life black players were black in the game, huge linebackers resembled their true self). In PS1/N64 we started to see realistic looking players. By this generation, Eli Manning really looked like Eli Manning. Players faces were scanned and looked very realistic (I think this might have been done in the PS1/N64 days too).

But... as gorgeous as it still is, the "Holy Grail" (in some people's opinion) is for video game football to eventually look something like controlling actual live-NFL TV type games. I dunno about you, but I could see the wrinkles and individual freckles in that screenshot player's nose. Looks amazing. Perhaps we'll see individual blades of grass on the field, and eventually, crowds with 4,000 uniquely-rendered fans.

Then again, I still find my favorite football game to be Tecmo Bowl on NES and Joe Montana 1 on Genesis. Go figure...

Commentators

[Doomstalk]

It's a pity they can't use all that processing power to make the commentary decent. If I have to hear "It's like there's a bee in his helmet!" one more time, I'm going to kill someone.

Oh and making the players look nice is all well and good, but I hope to hell that they did something about the crowd. Low-res sprites just look awful. Oh and the cheerleaders need a ton of work too. The ones in Madden 2005... yeesh.

Re:Commentators

[Golantig]

It's a pity they can't use all that processing power to make the commentary decent. If I have to hear "It's like there's a bee in his helmet!" one more time, I'm going to kill someone.

Processing power won't make the commentary any less repetitive. Recording lots more dialogue will. In this regard, it is a budget and storage issue.

Re:Newsflash

[Toddarooski]

I might be wrong, but I believe Forza Motorsport has licensed cars that take realistic damage.

Graphics?

[jone5ey]

Why is everyone making such a fuss over the graphics? I wouldn't mind if they put in the crowd from the original genesis version if the game played right. Madden 2005 had so many major gameplay flaws like the Offensive linemen not being able to block, and several rules where not implemented. You could have a receiver go out of bounds and then run back in to catch the pass with no flag. EA should focus on these things before they even start revamping the graphics. And hey, how about a decent PC version with all the features from the consoles?

Re:Newsflash

[lion2]

That's not true anymore. I dont know why Sony doesnt put car damage, but Forza Motorsport for Xbox (which is Microsofts GT4 competitor) will sport realistic car damage. Check out the screenshots below.

http://norm302.forzacentral.com/photos_damage.ht ml