The Most Popular Playstation Football Games

Once considered a failure due to slow development and limited technology for the majority of home users, Madden NFL has come a long way since its initial release in 1988. To date, the software title has sold better than 85 million copies that total will over 3 billion dollars in sales. Using the names of real players, real plays from professional play books, taking advantage of graphics capabilities and a real game feel are just a few of the reasons Madden football games have come to be one of the most popular playstation football games ever.

Madden was actually not the first professional approached by the developers of the game back in the 1980's. One of the top Quarterbacks at the time and other coaches were actually offered the opportunity but turned it down either though lack of interest or prior commitments.

The game has not remained static by any means. New things are added to each new version which is released every year. Almost 10 years after the game began a new mode called franchise mode was created. This allowed people to control the players if they chose to do so, but it also allowed for drafting, trades, and other functions of a general manager. It was the fist of its type for a football game.

More game modes were brought to the user with the release of the 2003 version. Of course a player could start the game and choose to simply play a single game, only now they had the options to play an entire season and even multiple seasons. It was in this version that online play was first offered, initially exclusive to uses of the playstation 2 console.

In the released version from 2004, online play was enhanced and a new addition called the playmaker tool was implemented. This feature gave the offense the ability to expand from only 4 audible options to the ability to change the direction of plays and assign hot routes at the line of scrimmage. This was a big step for the realism of the game. The playmaker tool was made more robust in the next version released in 2005. In the previous release, this feature was only available for the offense, and that put players on defense at a decided disadvantage. With the addition of this feature on defense, the playing field become level again, and as with the 2004 version, game play become even more realistic. The trick stick, lead blocker controls, a new weapons control, and even a feature called league play, which allowed up to 32 players to compete through the web over the course of an entire season, each arrived in subsequent versions of the game. The most recent versions shift the focus in an attempt to be more than just a game. The vision for Madden is now to be a more true to life simulation.

Playstation football games have dominated for good reason and have become as much a simulation as they are a video game. Playstation 3 Madden football games have been super popular for over 20 years, and future development promise to make the simulation even more true to life.