Madden ’08 Update

(image courtesy of IGN)

IGN has a preview of Madden ’08 for the Wii, and it looks like EA is putting in a significant amount of effort into making this a great football team. Highlights include a Telestrator mode that allows you to draw on the screen of an instant replay, gesture based audibles, and a fully robust online mode with streaming scores, ranked and unranked 2 player matches, and updated rosters.

One note about the online portion is that it does not use Wii Friend Codes or the Wii Friend system altogether (though it does use Miis) – it uses the EA Nation Persona account. This is similar to the Xbox editions, which also run on EA servers. EA has shown that it has the manpower and expertise to online its way. If this is successful, perhaps Nintendo will start to build a more robust online service. I’ve enjoyed what I’ve seen so far with Strikers – things can only go up.

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