Madden on Revolution

Filed in archive Interviews on April 27, 2006

Gamespot.com has an interview with John Schappert, the head of EA Canada (where Madden for Wii is being developed). Check it:

Players will hike the ball by mimicking a quarterback receiving the ball from the center, and then pass it to a receiver by making a throwing gesture with the free-hand controller. The faster the passing motion, the more of a bullet pass it becomes (in previous Madden editions, bullet passes were made by holding the passing button down longer).

Kicking the ball will be accomplished by sweeping the controller up as if it were a kicker's leg striking the ball. A fast, level swing will make for a hard, straight kick.

The Revolution controller will also come into play when running the ball, as jerking the controller left or right will make the ball-carrier juke to either side, while shoving it straight ahead will make him stiff-arm the opposition.

GS: What can you say about EA's plans to bring other franchises, other familiar names to the Revolution? Is this something that we'll see unveiled across all the major brands eventually?

JS: I can tell you that we're working on titles other than just Madden right now and we're not unveiling those just yet. I think you'll see continued support for Revolution and you'll see EA continue to bring innovative titles that maximize the power of the machine. What's important to us is we've recognized the uniqueness of the Rev and how innovative it is, and what we don't want to do is say, "Hey, there's another platform, lets port a game to it and get it on that platform." Unless we can maximize that game for the power, the uniqueness, and the innovative control, we're going to wait until we know how to do that right to bring those franchises there. What I'm proud of is all the franchises we have in development have very innovative control schemes as I've just described for Madden. They're maximizing the power of the machine: the control, the WiFi. What makes the Revolution unique is what our focus is for our Revolution group and the titles they're working on.

GS: So we won't be seeing straight ports to the Rev?

JS: I don't think Revolution consumers want straight ports. We want to bring out games that are great for the Revolution. And that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to take our expertise, and happily having a great football engine that we can count on solves a lot of problems. You don't have to sit there and worry about, "Let's get the game to play great football AI." It's more about, "Let's get the game to play great on the Revolution with a brand new, unique control device." Which is really the problem that we think all of our games should be solving on the Revolution.

GS: Will we see more franchise-driven Revolution games from EA or will it be a chance to try out new IPs specifically built around the Revolution?

JS: When we talk about a new platform, what would the Revolution be without having Madden there? I think users expect some of our core, big franchises to be on Revolution and we understand that. I think you'll see EA support the Revolution with our strong franchises, but at the same time it's such a unique machine with a unique controller that it certainly gives us opportunity to think about doing new things and specific games just for that platform. At the same time, we have such a wealth of franchises that to me what's kind of cool is when you think about taking a franchise like Madden and doing that on Revolution-while people have played football games before, they've never played Madden this way. Yes, you've seen a football game before, but you've never seen anything like this before.

So that's what excites us. Even though we are expected to bring over some of our big franchises [to the Revolution], we're bringing them over and there's massive innovation in them. I think you'll see a lot of innovation in all the franchises we bring over. At the same time, in the future I wouldn't doubt that maybe there are some originals we can do, but I would hope that you look at the games we're bringing over, and even if you've seen the franchise before, you think that it's an original in and of itself, too. I hope you look at Madden Revolution and say "Holy cow! That's unique, that feels like an original game just for the Revolution."

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