Madden ‘09 Off PC Roster

Economic Setbacks Cited; not Completely Dead to EA

When Madden NFL ‘09 is released on August 12th, it will be for all major consoles, but the most flexible gaming platform will be ignored. For the first time since Madden revolutionized the football sim in 1989, there will be no port of the game for personal computers.

The idea was suggested but not entirely clear when Electronic Arts released a press statement on the game last week. No PC port was mentioned. It was set in stone on Tuesday when Microsoft’s Peter Moore spoke about the exclusion on his blog. He said the decision was no joke–just business:

We knew that our decision to not develop this year’s Madden for the PC would be an unpopular decision in some circles. But I’ll reiterate what I said a couple of weeks ago in this space…the PC presents some very serious business challenges to us in the sports category, particularly because so many of you all are playing your favorite sports games on the PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii. We are committed to shipping a limited number of our games on the PC this year, but we’ve also had to cut a few of our games from the platform. We do have ideas for how to revitalize the PC for sports games and the types of games that are best suited to the platform, and we’ll continue to explore those.

In addition Moore elaborated further on the decision to bundle NFL Head Coach ‘09 only with the Madden ‘09 Collector’s Edition:

Reviews were mixed when we shipped NFL Head Coach a couple of years ago. Believe me, I think I’ve heard most of the good and bad on that one, mostly from our development teams who are acutely aware of everything you liked and didn’t like…down to the finest details. From what I’ve seen of new Head Coach, this is an entirely new game. I know you don’t want to just hear that from me, so listen to our producers over the next few months talk and show you everything they’ve done to re-work a concept that has a ton of potential, especially with how we’re creating a connected experience between Madden and Head Coach.

That said, the decision still isn’t sitting well with some Madden faithful. Even for EA, a double whammy so close to one another is rare. But given this and the buyout attempts they’ve made for Take-Two Interactive…they don’t look too good to gaming right now.

Electronic Arts stock on NASDAQ closed yesterday up almost one percent, then bounced back some in after hours trading.