Metacritic user review ia some of Mut 21 coins the very pessimistic and bi polar testimonials you may find with quite a few review bombs. To be honest. A whole lot of WalMart's didn't even get standard edition. Just Deluxe and MVP rather than many copies at that. It's been very weird how small they are shouting"BUY THE NEW MADDEN" as it comes to physical shops in that manner. Like, 70+ bucks or nothing. EA doesnt care, they all care is the sound of the $. It can have a flat 0 on metacritic, if it leaves countless millions every year thats all that matters to them. I am surprised EA hasn't introduced planned obsolescence however where old Madden games cannot work after the year they are launched. I thought they already did this with nba, believed it had been for each of the sports games.
They kill servers after 18 months I believe. Which locks you from a huge section of the content since they induce you to be online for anything besides play today to work. Not to mention unskipable 2 -3 moment ads in a $60 game. Consumers receive exactly what they paid for. The sports title fans did it to themselves. Like 2k does with their sport games? You get 18 weeks of servers, and then you need to buy the new one to maintain playing online. (now as enthusiast project Skylords Reborn) Yes, rather than charging nothing for the rosters, they efficiently spend a negligible sum of money and charge you 60$ for it.
Since Madden's business model is built around Ultimate Team, a match mode where you slowly accumulate more powerful players over the course of this year (preferably by purchasing arbitrary packs, of course). EA spends the entire year in a trickle feed, in which they keep bumping the quality of players you get. You begin the year with 70-80 OVR players, by January you are getting 85 OVR, by April you get some 90 OVR, then right before the next game they're handing out 95 OVR players to help keep people engaged and interested.
If they did not launch a new Madden, there would be nothing to work toward (everyone would have elite rosters) and folks would walk off. It is scummy, but the total Madden franchise is based on people spending hundreds on MUT and then jumping to the next game a year later. On the flip-side, if you don't care about being always up-to-date with rosters, most sports games nowadays have deep"end-of-life" earnings just before the next one comes out.
That's how I have purchased the Madden games I own. Hell the most recent NBA2K was on steam for like 92% off another day. They do it the MUT players need to restart their collection every season. EA doesn't really change much with each Madden series. I Play franchise, and I am honestly ok with older rosters. If Metacritic scores appears to bear significance to revenue then they'd care. Metacritic scores matter to publishers as soon as it gives them the chance to screw more than developers. Might make some stockholders ears perk up a little, but buy Madden 21 coins I don't see much besides that.