Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Playstation Football Games Are Incredible

Once considered a failure due to slow development and limited technology for the majority of home users, Madden NFL has come a long way since its initial release in 1988. To date, the software title has sold better than 85 million copies that total will over 3 billion dollars in sales. Using the names of real players, real plays from professional play books, taking advantage of graphics capabilities and a real game feel are just a few of the reasons Madden football games have come to be one of the most popular playstation football games ever.

In fact Madden was not the first professional consulted for the game. There were players and even coaches that turned down the change at being the games name sake and guiding influence, however they all have prior obligations or simply were not interested. Fate came in to play and Madden, who is a super bowl winner and well known announcer, is probably most recognized through the game. The game has evolved over the years and adds new features to each new release. Franchise mode was added to the game in almost a decade after it's creation. This allowed players to do more than just control the players. They could actually manage the rosters by trading and drafting players for their virtual teams. This was already being done with some baseball games available at the time but was a first for any football offering.

More game modes were brought to the user with the release of the 2003 version. Of course a player could start the game and choose to simply play a single game, only now they had the options to play an entire season and even multiple seasons. It was in this version that online play was first offered, initially exclusive to uses of the playstation 2 console. A new feature called the playmaker tool was included in the 2004 version. This was a feature that enhanced the realism of the game considerably. Players could now make changes to the direction of plays after they broke the huddle. Previously they were limited to 4 audibles, but now they could be more flexible and could send receivers on hot routes too. The playmaker tool was made more robust in the next version released in 2005. In the previous release, this feature was only available for the offense, and that put players on defense at a decided disadvantage. With the addition of this feature on defense, the playing field become level again, and as with the 2004 version, game play become even more realistic.

The trick stick, lead blocker controls, a new weapons control, and even a feature called league play, which allowed up to 32 players to compete through the web over the course of an entire season, each arrived in subsequent versions of the game. The most recent versions shift the focus in an attempt to be more than just a game. The vision for Madden is now to be a more true to life simulation.

Playstation football games have dominated for good reason and have become as much a simulation as they are a video game. Playstation 3 Madden football games have been super popular for over 20 years, and future development promise to make the simulation even more true to life.

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