EA Sports To Announce "Madden" Cover Athlete Later This Month

By Eric Fisher, Staff Writer, SportsBusiness Journal

"Madden" Cover Athlete Will Be Unveiled On Late Night Show April 23rd

The cover athlete for "Madden NFL 10," the latest iteration of the venerable EA Sports football title, will be formally announced later this month on the eve of the NFL Draft, in keeping with prior years. Earlier this year, EA Sports executives considered different marketing programs to unveil the cover athlete, which represents one of the most coveted player endorsements in the entire industry and the first major wave of marketing for the game, which is released each August. But after meeting with the NFL, EA elected to stay with recent practice in which the cover athlete will first be unveiled on a late night talk show the night of Thursday, April 23, and formally announced the following day in N.Y. preceding the April 25-26 NFL Draft. “We owed that to the NFL,” said EA Sports President Peter Moore. “When the world is thinking all about baseball in April, this is a block of time that football takes back and owns. It’s a natural to be part of that.”

RELEASE POINT: The retail release of the game itself, however, will shift this year from its customary second Tuesday of August to Friday, August 14. The weekend opening, driven in part by requests from large-scale sellers, will further EA’s existing practice of releasing Madden in similar fashion as a Hollywood blockbuster film. Company executives have not disclosed their thinking on what the "Madden NFL 10" launch plans will entail, but after recent initiatives that included renting out the Rose Bowl for an all-day festival and a New Years’ Eve-style ball drop at Times Square in N.Y., something large-scale is undoubtedly in the offing.

CALLING AN AUDIBLE: The game itself is undergoing its second massive development change in many years. For the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions, further photorealism and accuracy to real life are key tenets under the theme of “Fight For Every Yard.” The Wii version, meanwhile, will look less like the other versions as the animation style has been reworked and stylized to make it more in line with its forthcoming tennis title, “Grand Slam Tennis.” “We’re getting to the sweet spot of the development cycle for the next-generation consoles,” Moore said. “They’ve each been out for several years, and we continue to get smarter about optimizing our games, certainly ‘Madden,’ for each of them and creating distinct experiences.”

GAME CHANGER: Meanwhile, Moore at yesterday's IMG World Congress of Sports, presented by SportsBusiness Journal/Daily, delivered a feature presentation, asserting the introduction of the Nintendo Wii has had a profound effect on the gaming universe, changing the landscape by creating gamers out of people who previously showed little or no interest. Moore said the console has spawned a new category in the industry called lifestyle sports games. “It’s about bringing lifestyle to life." Moore said that while EA used to build one game and reconfigure it to run on traditional consoles and the Wii, the company now has a separate team designing and producing games for the Wii. “You can’t ignore the guy who has 50 percent of the market,” he said.