This year at EA Play, Electronic Arts surprised many by announcing Madden NFL 19 for PC, and possibly surprised even more fans by not announcing the game for Nintendo Switch.
During an interview at E3 2018, DualShockers asked Creative Director Mike Young and Senior Producer Carlos Guerrero about the reasons behind this course of action.
We learned that a part of the reason is simply timing: the game is developed on PC, and with the fact that Electronic Arts is moving into subscription business models with Origin Access, they thought it was the perfect time to introduce the franchise to the PC user base, alongside all the “cool stuff” that Frostbite has to offer. “It just made sense.”
On top of that, there are so many users on PC, and the developers thought that it was time to offer them what console users have enjoyed for years.
The reason why it wasn’t done before was a simple matter of priorities. Last year the team was busy implementing Frostbite which was a big innovation in itself, so development resources were allocated to that instead.
We also heard that a Switch port for Madden NFL 19 was never really talked about by the team. This doesn’t mean that it’s something they’d never do, but it hasn’t been part of the conversation for now.
If you want to see more of the game, you can check out the latest trailer. The game will be released for the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC on August 10th.
[Original interview by Lou Contaldi and Logan Moore]