New Madden’s lack of launch week review scores was partially by EA’s design
Plus: U.S. console sales surge thanks to EA's college football hit
Critics say last week’s Madden NFL 25, the latest game in Electronic Arts’ popular pro football franchise, is “slightly better” than last year’s game, “really solid” or maybe “another pretty mixed bag.”
It’s an 8.5/10 or, viewed from another angle, a 5/10.
That’s all according to reviews published this week, because one of gaming’s biggest franchises attracted relatively few reviews the week it came out.
That's an ongoing trend for Madden.
One factor: American football’s massive but regional appeal, which causes some big reviewers to skip it. Eurogamer, for example, doesn’t appear to have reviewed any Maddens since 2014.
Another: Reviewers sometimes just skip sports games, amid debate about whether reviewing annualized sports video games is still relevant.
A third: It’s also a byproduct of publisher EA’s approach to reviews for Madden NFL 25. This year, extending an approach it has used in the past, EA stipulated to most reviewers to whom it sent review copies that scored reviews couldn’t run until a few days after the game was available and purchasable by the public. That’s according to a Game File review of agreements sent by EA to reviewers.
To understand the dynamics around Madden reviews, you first need to absorb the idea that Madden NFL 25, like many modern games, had two release dates.
The game was officially released last Friday, August 16, though players who purchased a deluxe edition gained access 72 hours early, on August 13 (even the 12th in some time zones).
As of that August 13 early release, there were no Madden NFL 25 reviews online from critics, according to a check of review aggregators OpenCritic and Metacritic.
By the 16th, the day of the game’s wide release at its standard price, there were about a dozen scored reviews and several unscored.
By comparison:
Black Myth Wukong, released August 20, had garnered some 60 reviews from critics by its release date, as tracked by Metacritic.
Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth, drew over 100 reviews from critics by its late-February release date, based on a Metacritic tally
Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD, a Switch remake of a decade-old Nintendo 3DS game, had 57 by its late June release date, per Metacritic
Madden isn’t exactly a low-interest franchise, at least in the United States. The 2024 edition of the game was the third-best-selling premium video game last year, as tracked by Circana.
Madden is, of course, a sports video game, and that does raise some questions about player—and reviewer—interest in a traditional review of the game. Some sports just don’t get a lot of reviews. Metacritic shows more than 70 reviews all-time for last year’s EA Sports FC 24 soccer game, but this year’s MLB The Show 24 baseball game, with its more limited regional appeal, has about half of that.
There’s another key difference, when comparing Madden to the likes of Final Fantasy, Luigi’s Mansion and other non-sports releases: when reviewers got their hands on the game. Copies of the three games bullet-pointed above—like most other premium releases in the industry—were sent to game reviewers a week or more ahead of release.
Not Madden.
For Madden NFL 25, reviewers received code for the game from EA on its early launch date, August 13, according to a Game File check with four sources familiar with reviews across multiple popular publications.
What’s more: EA’s rules for most of the reviewers Game File spoke to explicitly prohibited scored reviews running until August 16.
That means that the average person could have run a scored review ahead of the outlets that agreed to EA’s terms, simply by buying the game on the 13th, playing it a lot for the next two days and publishing their take.
It “feels like they are still actively shielding Madden from critics,” one reviewer told Game File, asking not to be named out of concern their comment would get their publication heat from EA.
An EA representative did not provide any on-the-record comments, when asked about the company’s strategy around Madden reviews.
EA’s College Football is available to reviewers earlier, reviews better
Sources told Game File that EA provided reviewers copies of its other big summer sports game, EA Sports College Football 25, a few days ahead of its three-day early launch availability, days before the public could play it.
Scored reviews of the College Football game largely weren’t published until wide release on July 19, but reviewers had had more time with the game (two reviewers told me that EA had a similar prohibition against scored reviews running during the early launch).
By its full release date, College Football drew 17 reviews and one review-in-progress, according to a check of OpenCritic and Metacritic.
Here’s how the two games have scored:
EA Sports College Football 25 was reviewed positively, averaging 82 to 84 on review aggregators.
Madden NFL 25 is averaging 68 to 70 on those same aggregators.
What’s a Madden review for, anyway?
Last year during Madden release season, GameSpot reviewer Mark Delaney asked “What's Even The Point Of Sports Game Reviews?”.
“Sports games don't need reviews the way indies or even other big-budget games do,” he wrote. “They sell themselves.”
Delaney noted that he was playing that year’s Madden at the same time the public was playing it via the game’s early launch period. EA’s rules that year, like this year’s, kept him from reviewing it until the game’s “official” full release date, he wrote.
Delaney reviewed this year’s Madden this week, a week after its early access release. He gave it a six out of 10.
I asked IGN’s reviews editor, Dan Stapleton, what his popular outlet’s readers even want out of a Madden review. “It's all over the map because there are wildly different audiences,” he said.
“If someone bought it last year, they purely want to know if it's worth buying this year's $70 upgrade. [They] are furious if we say it's even okay, when the upgrades aren't what they wanted to see. (Some believe it's never worth it.)
“If they didn't buy it last year—or have never bought it before—the expectations for a review are completely different, and they want to know if Madden as a whole is a good game.
IGN hasn’t technically run its full review of this year’s Madden yet. Last Thursday, a day before the game’s wide release, they ran a “review in progress” without a score.
“I find myself… optimistic?” IGN reviewer Will Borger wrote. But he had not yet had the time to fully assess the game.
Item 2: A different football game supercharges U.S. console sales
EA Sports College Football 25 had such a strong launch last month that it, at least temporarily, turned a negative console sales trend positive, according to research firm Circana’s report of U.S. spending on video games in July.
It had already been understood that EA’s first college sports title in over a decade was a hot seller, but it’s impact on hardware sales was less clear.
College Football is only available on the new-gen Xbox Series and PS5 consoles, and it had the potential to move people into a new console generation (many people have been hesitant to transition).
It succeeded, boosting hardware sales for Xbox and PlayStation despite continued declines of the Switch, where the game wasn’t offered, according to Circana analyst Mat Piscatella.
Video game hardware sales tracked by Circana—namely, game consoles—increased 12% compared to July 2023, to $326 million.
Spending on hardware in the U.S. had been down 31% year-on-year as of June 2024. Now it’s down just 27% as of July.
As for the game’s sales, EA said on July 30 that the game had reached five million unique players in its first week of release.
Circana now lists EA Sports College Football 25 as the top-selling premium game in the U.S. for the year, in terms of dollar sales, besting the surprise PC/PS5 February hit Helldivers 2. (Helldivers 2 is still the top-selling in terms of units, Piscatella told Game File, noting its price tag is about half of College Football’s).
Item 3: High internal expectations will drive more Microsoft gaming changes
“For us, as fans as players of games, we just have to anticipate there’s going to be more change in …some of the traditional ways that games were built and distributed,” Microsoft gaming chief Phil Spencer said on the Xbox On podcast from Gamescom this week.
He was acknowledging the decision to bring the first-party game Indiana Jones and the Great Circle to PlayStation and not just keep it on Xbox and PC.
Spencer didn’t quantify how much benefit Microsoft expects from a multi-platform approach, but he did reiterate a message he’s delivered to Game File and others this year about the expectations within Microsoft for the gaming division.
“We run a business,” he said. “It’s definitely true inside of Microsoft the bar is high for us in terms of the delivery that we have to give back to the company, because we get a level of support from the company that’s just amazing in what we’re able to go do.”
Some of those expectations are public.
Microsoft’s current financial outlook calls for its gaming revenue for July-September 2024 to be about 35% higher than it was ion the same months last year. The company expects Activision-Blizzard games to account for a net gain of 40% vs. last year (in other words, revenue would have been expected to decline without the October 2023 purchase of the Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Candy Crush giant). Xbox content and services revenue is expected to grow low- to mid-50 percent for the quarter, according to Microsoft’s most recent forecast.
Item 4: In brief…
💡 Ubisoft is taking another plunge at Steam Early Access with news that Heroes of Might & Magic: Olden Era will launch via that program in the first half of 2025.
Steam Early Access games launch well before they are completed, with the remainder of development happening in full view of—and with feedback from—the public.
One of last year’s best-selling and best-reviewed games, Baldur’s Gate III, had been released in early access, an approach that developer Larian Studios champions for all its games.
But most big publishers have avoided offering games in this way. Ubisoft took its first foray last spring with The Rogue Prince of Persia.
💬 2K’s Mafia: The Old Country “will offer voice acting in Sicilian, inline with the game’s setting in 1900s Sicily,” per the game’s official X account, following questions about whether it’d offer an authentic language option.
🤔 Here’s a good quote from Alex Hutchinson, creative director on Raccoon Logic’s Revenge of the Savage Planet, as he spoke about his prior team’s time making a first-party game for the now-defunct Google Stadia streaming platform, per VGC: “Google asked us to make a game for everyone, something ‘universally loved’ like Google Maps. What does that even mean?”
Interesting tactic by EA, and obviously well within its rights. Also interesting about the conundrum of reviewing sports titles. Do you write for the fans or the newcomer? Do you enlist a fan reviewer or a newcomer reviewer? Should you do both?