There Will Be No Madden NFL 13 Blog at Halftime of the Super Bowl

EA Sports has announced there will be no blog released at halftime of this year’s Super Bowl for Madden NFL 13. For the previous three years the company has taken the opportunity to announce some base features or explain the general direction of the upcoming title at that time. Generally the blogs have been directed to the more hardcore crowd that would actually be paying attention to Madden news in February, and though they didn’t amount to “big” news that marketing certainly wanted to hold for later, they were still of value particularly given they made Madden the only sports game to release any sort of info that early. 

Part of the decision to scrap an early blog could be related to the inability to materialize one of the two features announced at that time last year. “Tuner” updates being added to Madden NFL 12 were touted as being a significant development – yet were never spoken of again and the company has refused to comment on what happened to that feature.

More likely though it has to do with the new development team composition and leadership. The guys who really pushed for community engagement and early info, like the unprecedented Super Bowl blog, are now gone. The new regime has taken over. Post-release support in the way of patches for Madden 12 is apparently complete after just the one feedback-based patch and presumably for the same reason – dev team focus has turned to Madden NFL 13.

It’s disappointing news but not necessarily a bad sign for what’s to come just a change in the way things are being handled. For a different angle of insight into the Madden NFL development process check out this article from Grantland that went out earlier this week.