First, and whre is firmware 2.40!?!? thats all i have to say, i can care less about madden

About time EA gave sony some love. Even if this is a stunt to make PS3 owners get back on the EA bandwagon. Dont give in PS3 peeps make them do something drastic. How about an Exclusive that was multiplatform before.

This is good but I'll reserve final judgement till I get to play the game myself. That and also we'll see how NCAA 09 goes.

Hope Madden is better since '05 I haven't bought one do to them getting worse, but with the 20th anniversary one I might get this one.

The head of Microsoft's Xbox 360 division goes to EA, and all of a sudden EA cares about the PS3? Talk about irony. I'll belive it when I see it. Hoping for the best, but expecting nothing.

wow never saw that coming especially from peter moore who talked alot of trash regarding the ps3 and sony

I hate to be off topic but I agree with gamewaffle. In game text and voice, and direct channels will make it more than a worthy competitor for the xboxlive. Back burner things like BD live etc and get these HIGHLY requested features out post haste sony.....jeeezz!

On TOPIC - this is good news. I really think sony needs to work with these 3rd party devs and play some hardball with MS. The PS3 is better hardware just needs the software both in and out!

"...a company that is known for its Sony support"?

Well, not very much so lately. I agree that this is all just a stunt to bring some some of the Sony-faithful back into the EA fold. And as much as it pains me, I'm even going to forego Mercenaries 2, which sucks because Pandemic is a great studio. I'm finished with EA because they've released nothing but garbage on the PS3 since launch. I gave them props earlier for attempting to get the orange box to us, but that was a last generation game and it still ran terribly compared to the 360 version. Pathetic.

Gamewaffle and Mattchewie. WTF? This story has NOTHING to do with XMB or even first part Sony activities, Why try to derail this with b|tchmoan nonsense that isnt even remotely part of the topic at hand, it's stupid and mildly retRrded of you. One bit of remotely good news and you cant help but spout pointless complaints especially when you already know the stuff is comming soon.

You want to complain about something why dont you complain about how Peter Moore still eat babies fresh from the wombs of screaming mothers?

We shall see what happens. Who knows maybe Peter Moore went to EA because he knows the PS3 is a beast so it was the only way he would be able to develope for it.

psn id: gingo.... finally EA might be hauling some a55 and getting a move on with supporting all of their consoles they develop on, ps3 owners were getting severely screwed and maybe this is the turnaround we have been waiting for

well i didn't play madden since 06 so maybe this will be good one i hope :)

sorry for off topic but EA please release RA3 same time on both consoles

EA can do nothing to regain me as a customer / fan.  Bottom line is that EA sucks.  Their servers are cr@p, their non-sports games are sub-par, and their sports titles are nearly indentical from year to year with an updated roster and some slightly tweaked, unimportant feature update, not to mention they cost full price.  Screw EA.

Peter Moore is a good guy?...

15th.... So what they are holding a conference for Sony?? How does that make the consumer any more happy or forgivefull after last year??  EA should do something for the PS3 owners who flat out got a real crappy Madden and NCAA port last year.

@13

*

HeII yeah.

 wow really?

Peter Moore eh!

i'll have to wait and see when madden is out then, if its true then i'll have to change my avatar and sig. never thought it would come to this, its surprising. 

I will check this one out, they should give us a discount for buying last years version, which I traded off 3 days later.

I just looked through every (working) screenshot for Madden NFL 09 and I have to say, graphically, they

are appaulingly substandard (that's bad). I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and hope that they've

made a lot of progress since those screenshots were taken, but if the final product ends up looking like

that, then it tells me that EA Sports has no idea how to do graphics for this generation.

Here are my observations about the current screenshots available for Maddel NFL 09:

1. Horrible grass. The grass in these screenshots has far too low resolution/level of detail and the

textures themselves are far too low quality, possibly a consequence of over-compression. Ordinarily,

that's not a huge deal, but considering this is a football game, it's kind of important. Some of those

screenshots wouldn't look nearly as bad if the grass didn't look so pathetic. This effect would be worst

during replays.

2. Speaking of over-compression, at least in some screenshots, the texture used for the skybox/skysphere

is horribly over-compressed, like they were working with a jpg and kept editing and resaving it as a jpg

with high compression. Fortunately, you don't usually tend to play football games from a bottom-up

perspective, so it probably wouldn't really detract from the overall visual quality much except for

replays. However, it doesn't provide much confidence that the game will deliver very accurate or dynamic

day-lighting/cloud cover, shadowing, etc. The other textures could stand to be quite a bit better as

well.

3. Speaking of lighting and shadows <slidewhistle down>, it just looks pathetic. In some screenshots

there doesn't appear to be any shadowing at all. Overall, the lighting leaves a lot to be desired. On the

plus side (relatively, anyways--normally this would just be expected) they appear to be doing lighting

calculations per-pixel and helmets appear to have environment-mapped reflections, though I have a feeling

those maps are static so i wouldn't count on seeing any players reflected in your helmet during replays,

but I can't tell from these still shots. I saw no sign of ambient occlusion, but that's not uncommon.

Though static ambient occlusion maps have been around for quite some time, realtime dynamic ambient

occlusion approximation is only lately becoming widely used as algorithms and computing power have

improved, gaining a lot of momentum after Crysis showed what ambient occlusion can do for quality

realism. I didn't notice any form of bump/normal mapping being used but I really wasn't paying attention

to that so I certainly could have just missed it. I can say that if it were there, it certainly didn't

catch my eye. The fog is mediocre, but that's not uncommon. As for High Dynamic Range (HDR) lighting,

well, I'll say this. I sure can't tell. If they're using it, then they're not using it right. Overall,

the lighting system they used in the current screenshots is lackluster at best. In the screenshots that

do appear to be making use of some level of shadowing, it is quite apparent that only some objects are

capable of casting shadows. For instance, the people on the sideline have no shadows and look as if they

were just pasted into the picture like sprites.

4. Speaking of the people on the sidelines, apparently nobody, not even the cameramen, is the slightest

bit interested in what is going on on the field. It's quite easy to see that everyone just looks across

at the other side of the field no matter what is going on. Some of the screenshots actually look pretty

funny, seeing cameramen lined up along the sidelines deeply involoved in filming the empty space in front

of them while all the action is taking place half-way down the field. Now honestly, sideline/spectator AI

is probably the last thing you need to worry about, particularly when you have much bigger graphical

issues to address. The only reason I bring it up is to make it clear that this is not looking like it

will be one of those "it's all in the details" kind of games. Personally, I wish they would just use

sprites on the sideline if it allowed them to focus on improving some of the other graphical aspects of

the game. Hey, at least then you'd never have to worry about the cameramen not looking at you.

I could go on, but if you've managed to read this far, you probably already get the point. Overall, the

graphics need a whole lot of work. I mean, come on, it's a football game, where is all your development

time going? Be honest, you probably just recycled the same gameplay engine you always use, made a few

tweaks to it and added maybe added a new feature. I don't know, it's just a theory. It's not like you had

a bunch of levels to design, dialogue and cinematics to record. I wouldn't be surprised if you're using

recycled mo-cap and player textures, too, at least from the old digital images. I realize that most of

your development budget on these games is probably consumed by licensing and marketing, but give me a

break. Now, until the game is actually released, I firmly believe that they probably are working on

improving the graphics since the current screenshots, but boy, do they have a long way to go to be

passable as this-generation. Quite frankly, If it weren't for the higher resolution, I would have guessed

these were from a PS2 game, and that's saying a lot.[/rant]

2.40 was due out the 11th.

i have a newfound respect for peter more now

EA lost my money. they need to fix there online servers because i cant stay connected to EA nation for nuttin. i use my wi-'fi to get rid of all the wires and i tried  from the wall to my PS3 same thing. but anyway i sign on to EA nation and in 5 mins i get knocked offline. its not my connect cause i can connect to evey other game  server with no problem. and i wanna kick a few a## in madden and live