EA will keep his name and they'll continue to make a boatload of money with each yearly release while making the minimum amount of fan-requested changes with the least effort possible.
The game is actually regressing. Just bought Madden after 3 years and the initial load time is somehow longer. Game sometimes stutters when running plays. Don't get me started on MUT being pushed everywhere. At this point, I wish they'd give me Madden 07 with better graphics.
They are doing the same thing with Fifa, pushing FUT and hoping kids gamble on packs. Gaming isn't about genuine good fun now, it is too focused on milking Mom and Dads wallets. I took a few years off Fifa because it was heading that direction and I knew it was time to retire. Caved in and purchased Fifa 22 last week after a 3 year sabbatical.
My wife: "How's the new game?!?"
Me: "Feels like 2019, I'm not sure what I bought."
I'm officially done with yearly sports releases and I guess that's ok to them because I'm clearly not their target demographic anymore.
> I'm clearly not their target demographic anymore.
Every year a new crop of kids come of age for the parents to be willing to buy them a game. For the rest, it's a status symbol just like the annual purchase of a new phone. Gotta have the latest player rankings! Like purchasing skins/wardrobe/stickers for in-game use. A whole generation of people that will probably be just fine paying Toyota a monthly fee to use their key FOBs.
They'll probably use his twitter account to shill NFTs sometime in the next year.
EDIT: for the downvoters: I was referring to Stan Lee's twitter account now being used to shill NFTs, and saw John Madden as the next logical target of that behavior. Said it tongue in cheek. I'll keep my jokes to myself from now on.
Having retired over a decade ago, I bet a fair number of Madden players already have no idea who John Madden is and may think it's an obscure term like gridiron.