Latest Peter Moore blog confirms no Madden 09 PC

When the Madden 09 20th Anniversary Collectors Edition press release mentioned all platforms known to man except for the PC people took notice. Now Peter Moore has confirmed that there will be no PC version of Madden 09 in his latest blog entry.

We knew that our decision to not develop this year’s Madden for the PC would be an unpopular decision in some circles. But I’ll reiterate what I said a couple of weeks ago in this space…the PC presents some very serious business challenges to us in the sports category, particularly because so many of you all are playing your favorite sports games on the PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii. We are committed to shipping a limited number of our games on the PC this year, but we’ve also had to cut a few of our games from the platform. We do have ideas for how to revitalize the PC for sports games and the types of games that are best suited to the platform, and we’ll continue to explore those.

One legitimate complaint regarding this decision is that when an exclusive license holder chooses not to develop for a particular platform there are no licensed alternatives. While anyone is free to make football PC games none can use the NFL. This is the case also with the MLB as 2K Sports does not make a PC title. It is my understanding that there are clauses in the contracts that require them to be released on all major platforms however the PC is no longer considered to be one.

It is understandable that the very low sales numbers have not justified producing PC titles for years now and it has actually been surprising that EA Sports has continued to produce PC versions of many of their games. Hopefully though EA goes at the PC market in a different way with new titles that cater to that small hardcore group. What may happen is you’ll see an NFL game down the line but using a different model such as what EA is doing with Battlefield Heroes. That game will be free to download and play and will be supported by advertisements and microtransactions.