EA Sports’ Madden NFL series is about to hit a big milestone.
The next installment in the Madden NFL series, initially thought to be titled Madden NFL ’14, will instead be Madden NFL 25. That’s because it’s the 25th anniversary of the series that started off as John Madden Football in 1988 on Apple II computers.
EA Sports wants you to help them celebrate, as they’re asking fans to vote on which NFL legend will grace the game’s cover. A bracket of 32 of the NFL’s all-time greats will go up on ESPN.com/MaddenVote on March 11th of this year, ESPN’s even broadcasting a live unveiling of the brackets that night.
“It’s great to be back with another year of the award-winning Madden NFL Cover Vote for a brand-new game that will be the deepest and most innovative in the history of the franchise when it launches in August,” said Anthony Stevenson, Senior Director of Marketing at EA Sports. “This year we’re posing the ultimate question of who’s more deserving; one of the NFL’s all-time greats or one of today’s hottest players?”
The Madden NFL series has been known both for its massive popularity – Madden NFL 13 passed 1.6 million in sales after just one week on store shelves and the series as a whole has sold over 99 million units – as well as its controversies: EA sports bought the rights to become the exclusive publisher of NFL games in 2004, dooming the NFL 2K series, and the franchise has also been rumored to be cursed.
Either way, it should be an interesting version for football fans; while no further details have been released, it’s almost a guarantee that EA Sports has more planned for this anniversary.