Game Informer: The Future of Madden

[cdj]

Interesting interview with Tiburon Football GM Cam Weber. I would assume some of the comments in regards to next-gen would apply to NCAA Football as well.

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It sounds like you'll be better prepared for the next-generation of systems and we won't see the early Madden games drop traditional features when they come out.

I think what happened in the last generation – and I think it happened in a lot of places across our industry. It absolutely did here – a lot of people were trying to re-write everything all though that transition, and so the games lost some depth and they kind of started from scratch and had to build the depth again. I think with this generation, what we want to do is really clean house, get our technology in order, and make sure we really have this great platform and these different elements so we can take that with us so we don't lose any depth along the way when we transition to future hardware.

On the flipside, is there any danger that you're starting things for the next-generation too early, and that you'll actually be behind when the next-generation hits since you're starting things already?

I think we're in so much better of a place today than we were in the last transition. Mainly because a lot of it is not a re-write, and the pieces that are re-writes, we're building a lot of those foundations now. These technologies that you're seeing are scaleable. Very scaleable.

Click here for the full interview.

[JeffHCross]

The fact that this generation shouldn't be a completely different kind of console (i.e. no DVD to Blu-ray transition, no SD to HD transition) should mean the studios are a lot better prepared. Plus the lessons learned from last time.

[SmoothPancakes]

The fact that this generation shouldn't be a completely different kind of console (i.e. no DVD to Blu-ray transition, no SD to HD transition) should mean the studios are a lot better prepared. Plus the lessons learned from last time.

Unless you're a 360 user if the rumors turn out true. But on the developers side, no, they don't have to deal with a big change like that to the entire process from scratch this time around.

[Rudy]

EA has always seemed to struggle when moving to a new console. Madden got shelved until they went polygon for the PS1. The PS2 was a relatively good transition for Madden although NHL and NBA sucked in their first game on the PS2. The 360/PS3 was a super rough transition for football imo. Let's hope it's not nearly as bumpy this time.

[SmoothPancakes]

EA has always seemed to struggle when moving to a new console. Madden got shelved until they went polygon for the PS1. The PS2 was a relatively good transition for Madden although NHL and NBA sucked in their first game on the PS2. The 360/PS3 was a super rough transition for football imo. Let's hope it's not nearly as bumpy this time.

Yeah, that's one the reasons I'm glad I didn't make the jump to 360 until a couple years after. NCAA/Madden 09 was my first EA games on the 360, so I only heard the horror stories of the first games for both on the 360 after the transition, glad I missed them and got to keep enjoying the PS2 versions with everything.

[souljahbill]

My first "next" gen football game was NCAA '10. I LOVED that game.

[JeffHCross]

Unless you're a 360 user if the rumors turn out true.

True. Thinking back to my comment yesterday, I'm not even sure what DVD-to-Blu-ray would add to the development side. So that's probably an immaterial change, unless the access time was slower or something.