With Michael Vick admitting guilt to federal dogfighting and conspiracy charges, there is no question that EA will look to remove him from Madden 08 completely. Both the NFL and EA will not want to be associated with him by having him in their game any longer. Examples of (somewhat) similar situations from this year include Pacman Jones not being in the game at all due to his year long suspension and Odell Thurman being removed from the game in the first roster update as his suspension was exte...

Something I have been fascinated with over the last week has been the reaction to Madden 08 on various forums. Despite getting high reviews there seems to be more negativity than ever. Now, negativity is nothing new around release time. Especially for EA Sports games that seem to attract a crowd that just loves to bash them for any given reason (real or not). So that in itself isn't new. However it seems as if more people than ever are demanding drastic changes. The interesting thing is tha...

While Madden 08 came out of the gates this week with widespread reports of lag and disconnect issues online, the team at EA has been working to improve the experience. It seems that those efforts have paid off.  For myself, the streak of 16 straight disconnects that began on Tuesday was broken on Thursday afternoon. Despite having played online without witnessing a single disconnect prior to release day, I was unable to get past the first play on the second drive of any game on Tuesday and...

UPDATE 8/15: I have received word that the Madden team is doing some tweaking today to try and improve the online experience. There may be instances where players are booted from games as those changes are implemented. Hopefully we see some immediate improvements in this area. I will be attempting more games this afternoon and evening and will report back on the results. *Updated results on 8/15: I attempted to play six games. The loading into the team selection screen and into the games was...