At Madden Bowl XVIII, EA Sports' Anthony Stevenson announced that the cover athlete for Madden NFL 13 will be voted on by fans for a second year. This year's field will be doubled to 64 candidates, and the first round of voting will be a "play-in" round pitting NFL teammates against each other to determine their franchise's representative in the second round through to the finals.

The full field of candidates was not announced. It will be on March 7, when voting commences online. The release date for the game is 8/28/12.

http://kotaku.com/5881879/fans-to-pi...-of-64-players

This game is just Madden 95, v13.

Ugh, like voting worked so well for 12

I'm out this year. I love me my Lions but I cannot justify another shitty game from EA.

This. Bought 12 and played it twice. Realized it was still a piece of shit. I will not buy 13.

Haven't bought one since 2008, and have not regretted my decision. Bring back the 2k series!

Teeeeeeeeeeeeeebowwwwwwwwwww

The last Madden I got was 2011. Skipped 2012 because of all the people who complained about it in this forum.

Other than updated rosters every year, has there been any significant new additions recently? Seems like alot of people bitch and moan about the gameplay year after year.

2K was great. I really, really hope they get another shot with the NFL license.

I don't think 12 was any worse then previous years. I didn't play 11, but have had a few different versions on the 360 and the there's always little things here and there added to the gameplay, but nothing significantly different. Seems like most of the changes are to different game modes.

I'll probably pass on 13 unless reviews say there are some better changes, unless Tebow is on the cover.

I miss the simple days of Madden 95

Yep. Assuming he's a candidate, there's your cover guy.

Tom Brady wil be the cover if he wins this Suoer Bowl, IMO.

Kyle Williams?

Madden 12 was less than stellar. Here's hoping they get it right this year.

Gronk.

Tebow will be on the cover --- which I just don't get because he SUCKS.

+1 to those saying Tebow will be on the cover. I would put money on it.

If a fan vote can get some nobody like Peyton Hillis on, there's certainly enough douches that are going to vote Tebow on.

Glad to see I'm not the only one that felt Madden 12 was pretty sub par. My friends were raving about it when it first came out and I didn't pick it up until after it had been out for a couple of months. I normally try to make it through a couple seasons of franchise mode and unlock the full 1000 pts of achievements but I got bored of it really fast and probably will trade it in this week.

I hope Gronk is and the only new feature is a spike-o-meter

At this point, aren't fans of teams better served voting for players on rival teams to be on the cover?

EA Exec: Madden NFL 13 To Focus On Defense



Electronic Arts chief creative officer Richard Hilleman says the new leadership group at EA Tiburon is focused on making defense fun again.

Hilleman is no stranger to the Madden franchise, having designed the original game alongside Scott Orr and John Madden back in 1988. When I sat down with him at DICE, one of the big questions on my mind was what fans should expect from Madden NFL 13 given the large turnover at the top of the development team. Hilleman seems optimistic.

"They are doing big things this year, he said. They're making big changes. Those are big changes that are going to break a lot of stuff, and they know that. What we're after is a better defense that's more fun to play.

The defensive side of the football has been long overdue for a revamp. The last major change to the defensive controls came in Madden NFL 05 with the introduction of the hit stick. Hopefully this retooling will also address the poor awareness demonstrated by the secondary in last year's game and mark the return of true gang tackling. If the new approach to defense was developed by EA Tiburon's shared technology group, there is a chance these features could extend over to NCAA Football as well.

Though Hilleman's current responsibilities extend beyond the EA Sports group, he still keeps close tabs on the division. I also asked him how he feels the new development team differs from last year's group, which lost general manager Philip Holt, creative director Ian Cummings, and executive producer Phil Frazier in the span of a year.

"The executive producer on the product line is Roy Harvey he said. Roy's been at Tiburon a long time. He did NCAA, so he knows the product and the system really well. Roy was also building a lot of the online back-end systems that supported Madden and the ancillary and flanker products that helped it, so he was being brought into the team where he's a pretty well understood player and he knows what he's got. The Madden engine is an acquired taste that requires specific knowledge. We go through that all the time – I get phone calls I still shouldn't get as far as I'm concerned. We brought Cam Weber on. Cam came from Fight Night and some other products. His cousin is Shea Weber from the Nashville Predators.

What I like about the new team is that they haven't accepted any of the conventional wisdom about the product. I found that when I went down there a lot and talked about change I wanted to see in the product, I was considered a raving lunatic because I advocated more change than almost anybody else did. I would take bigger risks than anybody else. I think Cam is built out of that same cloth. His attitude is what can I be not what could I lose. I think Cam will do some pretty interesting things in that space so I'm pretty optimistic. I've loved the people who have worked on that game over the years.

The other fact is Dale Jackson, who ran it for 14 years or something like that, he's like 35 feet away. So in the larger scheme of things Dale is still around, I'm still around, Roy is still around, and a lot of the new team is bringing the right kind of ideas. I don't think we're likely to make a terrible mistake, and I think we're pretty likely do so some things new that we needed to do.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/a...ZXAOCg.twitter

^^^ Ooooooooh. I'm out.

On the one hand I'm glad they're taking risks. On the other hand, I'm more than willing to wait a year to see how these risks pan out/get refined.

Isn't that how it usually works? They may some ridiculous changes every few years, and then it takes a year for it to get fleshed out and work well, and then it gets old after 2 or 3 years.