August 30 Will Be the New Release Date for Madden This Year and Beyond

[ChaseB]

Last night Peter Moore announced at the EA Sports Season Opener event that Madden NFL 12 would be releasing on August 30 rather than August 13. This announcement seemed peculiar given the fact that the game has always released on August 13. It also only fueled speculation because there are the potential issues with an extended NFL lockout and key Tiburon developers leaving the Madden team in the middle of the development of this year's game.

However, after speaking with EA Sports PR representative Rob Semsey, it seems like more a case of bad timing than anything else. The release date will actually continue to be August 30 beyond just this year. The thought process behind the move seems to be to sync Madden up with the start of the real NFL regular season.

Obviously, other potential factors like giving NCAA Football a bit more space to collect sales before Madden releases should be taken into consideration, but the overall sense was this was not a decision that was made overnight, but rather one that the team had wanted to make for quite some time.

From my perspective, this makes a lot of sense considering Peter Moore went out of his way last night to point out that he thought the improved sales of Tiger 12 could at least be partially attributed to how close the real Masters was to when Tiger 12 released. Tapping into the excitement of the upcoming real sports season seems to be something EA really wants to focus on across all its sports brands moving forward, so it would not shock me to see other release dates slightly tweaked in the future.

[JohnZapp]

very nice move in effectiveness for both madden and ncaa

[bukktown]

Do you mean the last week of august or that august 30th is the only day it will ever be released on?

[iva-chargers-fan]

i just buy madden because its football and NFL. but if ncaa football was also nfl i would go with ncaa

[jeremym480]

Very smart move for a myriad of reasons.

Pros
1. It gives "little brother" a chance for more sales (I'm not sure you can call them that anymore though)
2. Give the devs more time to catch bugs/glitches (this year only really)
3. Gives them time to build up anticipation during the pre-season
4. Opening Day rosters will be more accurate
etc., etc., etc

Cons
I actually can't think of a single con. Well, other than having to sift through a bunch of whiny, impatient people complaining but, other than that--- they're golden.

[SageInfinite]

Why now though? Don't get me wrong I'm happy, I'm just wondering what took them so long to realize this was a much better release date.

[PantherBeast_OS]

I really think this is a good move on EA part to move up the release date. To give people more time to play NCAA football and also gives Madden Dev team a little more time on working out the bugs and glitches in the game. I have nothing agaist them moving up the release by a few weeks. I see it as a good thing more then anything.

[ChaseB]

Quote: Originally Posted by SageInfinite

Why now though? Don't get me wrong I'm happy, I'm just wondering what took them so long to realize this was a much better release date.

They had to battle it out with the almanac folks to make sure they knew the new Madden Holiday was changed?