EA Announces Madden NFL 22 with Next-Gen Features That Won’t Be Available on PC

[Tsing]

Image: EA



EA today announced the latest installment of its popular and long-running football franchise, Madden NFL 22. Madden NFL 22 is poised to look and feel better than ever thanks to new next-gen features such as “Gameday Atmosphere” and “Next Gen Movement 2.0,” but unfortunately for PC gamers, these benefits will be exclusive to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S consoles. EA did something similar with FIFA 21 and explained that it had chosen to restrict next-gen features from the PC platform to keep the minimum specification down so it’d be accessible to a wider range of players/systems. Developed by EA Tiburon, Madden NFL 22 will be released for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PC (Origin, Steam), and Google Stadia on...

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[Eduardo_Domingot]

I am getting so tired of this. Can they just put in the time for feature parity with consoles...

 

[MadMummy76]

LOL, how is removing features change the minimum specifications as opposted to making them optional? If you are going to lie at least make it something remotely believable.

 

[Brian_B]

Sounds more like the profit margins are higher on consoles...

 

[Niner51]

I miss the NCAA Football games. Madden never really seems to change other than roster updates.

 

[Zarathustra]

It's a tough nut to crack.

Consoles are more uniform. Everyone who has a certain model has the same hardware. PC's are all over the place.

A high end PC absolutely obliterates any console in existence on the performance front, but those who can and are willing to spend thousands of dollars on a PC are a pretty vanishingly small proportion of the overall gaming market.

I can easily see how with a game like Madden, that has wide appeal even among people who don't consider themselves "gamers" there would be a benefit to making the title compatible with basic machines, in order to sell as many copies as possible. We are talking Intel integrated graphics on a thermal throttling dual core here, right?

To not make this an option that can be turned on an off based on system performance is pretty lazy though.

Either way, this is not something that impacts me. Last sports game I played was probably Ice Hockey on the NES in 1988.

 

[Brian_B]

Consoles are more uniform. Everyone who has a certain model has the same hardware. PC's are all over the place.

A high end PC absolutely obliterates any console in existence on the performance front, but those who can and are willing to spend thousands of dollars on a PC are a pretty vanishingly small proportion of the overall gaming market.

I think the big hangup is that you already spent the time and effort to implement the feature for the console.

Now your taking more effort to specifically remove it for the PC.

That same amount of effort to remove it could easily just make it an optional effect on the PC. Or, you know. Just leave them in and raise the recommended specs -- It's not like the same version that is going to be on the PS4/XBO is going to be vastly more powerful than a PC running the game.

Now I'm sure we could come up with some features that wouldn't allow for symmetrical gameplay on the same platform. But somehow I don't think that is the case here.