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Games Entertainment

Electronic Arts Reveals Next-Gen Madden 47

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."
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Electronic Arts Reveals Next-Gen Madden

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  • Newsflash (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Servo5678 ( 468237 )
    Extra, Extra! Madden Commercial To Make Life Worthwhile!

    Of all the nextgen things to reveal, did it have to be football? Show me a shooter, show me a platformer, show me a flight sim, show me anything but sports.

    • Re:Newsflash (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MBCook ( 132727 ) <foobarsoft@foobarsoft.com> on Monday April 18, 2005 @06:56PM (#12275452) Homepage
      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.

      • 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.

        As long as GT games use liscensed cars, they will probably never have anything close to realistic impact damage. Otherwise those sound like exactly what I'd expect from a next-gen GT.

        • Yeah, I know that's why they do it. Too bad, but I can understand (from the car maker's point of view). But Project Gotham didn't use licensed cars (IIRC), but they sure LOOKED like various cars to me. Burnout 3 did a good job with nice looking cars that take damage too.

          But back on GT4, they could add damage and make it effect handling and such, without showing it on the car (just on a little HUD or something like that).

          I would LOVE to play a Project Gotham for the XBox 360.

        • Re:Newsflash (Score:2, Informative)

          by lion2 ( 779555 )
          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
      • Why do you want this game... to not look like a game? So you'll forget it's a game? So you can trick people into thinking that you're actually not playing games? What? Just curious. Games are an artform and taking away the look and feel of games might not be such a great idea right now.
    • 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

      • wonderful benchmark for what? something that doesn't mean *jack*? freckles in faces making you feel better that you're in control of the team? I guess not. anyways, there's a bunch of things that make sportsgames engines different from other engines(or rather, allow them to be different - you can take some freedoms on how you decide what's going to be shown for example.. and have a lot less models loaded up at given time..). basically you only know that the system is good for rendering a football field if y
        • Yes, (sarcasm) more freckles = better gameplay (/sarcasm).

          I simply said that eventually, a lot of players want to have their football video games look exactly like they do on the TV, only they control it. So, while you may be able to have fun playing Atari's "Xs and Os" football, in order to have that "like I'm watching and controlling real-live football" - then YES, Brent Alexander of the NY Giants DOES have to resemble his real-life self, with a thin little mustache facial hair deal.

        • Now now. be fair. There are some gameplay changes. I don't personally play the game, but my friends who play the seriese hardcore agree that there are substantial gameplay changes to the series every year. You just have to take it to a certain depth in order to see it, which in of itself (depth) is a crucial indicator of a good game.
          But you do bring up a good point. The industry is jumping through so many hoops for a features that do not affect the core element of games: gameplay. Yes, there are some game
    • "Show me a shooter, show me a platformer, show me a flight sim, show me anything but sports."

      Err okay. You do realize that sports are the hardest things for game consoles to realistically do, right? The more impressive a sports game is, the more impressive your flight sims, platformers, and shooters have the potential to be.

  • by 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.
  • by MBraynard ( 653724 ) on Monday April 18, 2005 @06:49PM (#12275370) Journal
    It will feature fully real-world physics of John Madden's humongous beer gut jiggling!
  • YES! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Sebadude ( 680162 )
    Now we can see his giant nostrills with infinite detail. Thank you EA.
  • This image, and a similar image of a car, have been floating around for weeks. I'd hardly call that 'unveiling'.
    • They're not quite the same image -- the earlier image you're talking about (this one here [totalvideogames.com]) is slightly different than the new one. Whether one is a pre-rendered mock-up and the other is a real screen shot, I don't know. It's getting harder and harder to tell the difference...
  • .....im not very impressed. Doesn't look THAT good. Looks like more like something just above what we can do presently with our current generation of consoles. Or even what our higher end PCs can do.

    Im very dissapointed.

    His nose is ugly.
    • Actually, id like to clarify why I think its so damn ugly.

      Looks like everything is blurred. But probably because this was taken from some prerendered movie. Textures are all blurred out, especially that metal piece near the top of his helmet. The helmet grill looks...meh... And his eyes! We've seen a lot better on tech demos from ATi/nVidia. The edge of his nostrils bother me the most. His lips seem so flat. We want chapped lips, damnit! Chapped lips!!! And his breath, man...nothing spectacular a
    • This is pretty good, considering there's gonna be at least 22 of these guys on the screen at once. It's comparable to a main character in a game on the current generation (Master Chief.) If it helps you any, I think that things will improve with time (more dramatically than in the last generation) because of all the difficult hardware.
  • Commentators (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Doomstalk ( 629173 ) on Monday April 18, 2005 @08:23PM (#12276474)
    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.
  • Graphics? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jone5ey ( 852043 ) on Tuesday April 19, 2005 @09:58AM (#12281015)
    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?

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