Friday, July 18, 2008

Madden Curse Strikes Again

Last night I was checking out some of the video previews Shacknews put up straight from the E3 floors. One of the titles I was anxious to checkout was EA Sports’ Madden 2009. The game is looking great and for the first time in years, actually looks worthy of a purchase. I say that only because there really haven’t been many graphical updates or noteworthy game play elements to justify paying $60+ for roster updates.

With all the Favre talk over the last week and a half, it finally dawned on me that the Madden Curse has struck again, and nobody’s talking about it. Sure it normally means that the cover athlete is doomed to suffer a year ending injury at some point. But this time it’s worse, yet beautiful for those of us that continually drink the Purple Kool-Aid. This time the curse affects an entire organization and their fan base.

Aside from the effects on the Packers, what about EA? With the game shipping in less than a month, the production part of it is finished. What happens if Favre gets re-instated and the Packers agree to trade him? All of a sudden you have Favre on the cover of the largest sports game in video game history, in the wrong jersey. The only reason he was chosen as the cover boy to begin with was as a tribute to his Ironman legacy in the NFL.

So not only has Favre’s desire to be the center of attention yet another year disrupted the Packers, Vikings (thanks to the Packers asinine allegations), and fans – it will also impact the video game industry and cause the Marketing team at EA Sports to question their decision making.

So do us all a favor Favre and stay retired. It’s one thing (good thing) to send the Green Bay Packers into a state of disarray, but the Vikings and Madden……..that’s going too far.

As for the game itself - from what I’ve seen while watching the E3 2008 footage, it’s looking very nice. I’ll be picking up this year’s addition for sure and can’t wait to run AD all over everybody on Xbox Live!

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