On this week’s version of Operation Sports Does Polling, OS user PhillyPhantic14 has a poll going in the Madden forum asking the simple question, “Will EA Sports College Football 25 coming back impact whether you buy Madden this year?”
It’s an interesting question because it was asked in the Madden forum, and because we still don’t really know much about EA Sports College Football 25. I mean we know things, but we haven’t seen the game and still don’t have an official release date or anything like that. Oh, and we do know it’s still being made by the same studio as the one that makes Madden.
So what are the results so far? Well, out of everyone who has voted, only one person has said they’ll only buy Madden.
One single person.
Beyond that, just under half say they’ll only buy EA Sports College Football 25. Now, do I doubt these results a bit, especially when the sample size is only about 100 people so far, and it comes at a time when people have been playing Madden for months? Yes, yes I do doubt the resolve of some of these folks and don’t believe they’re all going to pass up playing the next Madden.
That said, it does show that even on the Madden forum, the hype for the new college football game is strong, and people are on the whole more than ready for something new. And this makes sense because if we go back in time, a lot of us bought both games, and it was more rare than not that we chose just one. Some of us played NCAA for just that one month and then mostly forgot it. Others would play it for that month, check in on Madden, and then go back to NCAA. Others would play Madden and then get NCAA on sale and maybe just have it to import draft classes.
The other big point here is exclusivity. Whether exclusivity was paid for or happened due to only one title selling, only one game being around eventually means people just get tired of your shtick. Even if you’re a relatively good game, eventually the critics and fans will come for you. It’s just human nature, and we see it now with MLB The Show, NBA 2K, and Madden all dealing with review scores that have either stagnated or gone downhill, especially during this generation of consoles.
And it goes even to something like EA Sports FC 24. As EA’s soccer title has become more and more dominant over the husk of PES/eFootball, it’s led to more and more backlash on all fronts. We can chalk that up to game quality to some extent, but it can also just come down to so many people playing one specific game every year that they’re more laser focused on calling you out on everything.
Which is why I generally keep coming back to calling out the importance of two football games sticking around. Even if it’s two games from the same studio, it ultimately will help both games to just have something else to talk about. Of course, some of it will ultimately come back to “EA sucks at making football games” but that’s still better than the alternative when so much more of the conversation would be laser focused on just that topic.
If you want to vote in the poll, please do, let’s get that data humming and see if that one single person has more company or not by the end of the week.
