What Would Make Madden 25 Presentation Great?

It’s more than a week removed from the most hyped sports game release in the last 10 years (and College Football 25 will come up here for sure), but the sports game release window being what it is means Madden 25 was right back in the news last week as the hype now builds to its release on August 16. And while the focus for Madden 25 last week was technically gameplay, I was most intrigued by the gameplay tidbits that I would also consider part of the Madden 25 presentation.

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It’s not unfair to say Madden’s presentation has not been good enough for a long time. From commentary to TV-style presentation, it doesn’t really have something I would point to as “elite” in the sports category. It’s not terrible, but I would say it’s mostly just “there” in most cases. That said, I’ve also always been very interested in the question “what makes presentation special in a sports game?” and “what makes it a fan favorite?”

You can point to halftime shows or other broadcast-style flourishes — and those things would be true — but I think a lot of that can work in every sports game. Even if TV-style presentation is not something most sports games are great at, it’s something they could be great at no matter what sport the developers are mimicking.

This brings me back to Madden 25 and the inevitable comparisons to EA Sports College Football 25. We don’t know the full suite of presentation upgrades in Madden 25 so far, but EA went out of their way to discuss things like “signature pre-play style,” “signature locomotion run styles,” and general fidgeting and nuances by both offensive and defensive players as they head to the LOS. We can’t technically talk about the Madden 25 beta, but I will say (hypothetically) that if someone did play that beta, something that would be immediately noticeable is how much stuff like the pre-play fidgets are noticed and how much they add to the game.

When I play EA Sports College Football 25, the presentation pops the most with the crowds, the chants, the music, the pregame hype, and the team-specific celebrations. Some of those things could also work and be presented better in Madden, but they’re probably not at the top of many wishlists. College Football 25 could use better TV-style broadcast elements, and the “A team” of Herbstreit and Fowler is clearly worse than the “B team” of Rece Davis and co. but that’s the sort of stuff they just need to do better — it’s not specific to the sport.

But College Football 26 likely won’t be mimicking real running styles or showcasing the real throwing styles of college players. I would argue it would be a waste of resources to do that anyway.

At the same time, some of the stuff that will end up in Madden 25 should just be in all football games. The pre-play fidgeting and stuff like the gameplay visuals that tie into the feedback after you make adjustments to the offensive line should/will likely be in both football games by next year. However, the “signature” aspects are probably always going to be unique to Madden. After all, the NFL is more about stars that play for 10+ years, and the college game is more about the team itself and rolling over your roster year to year.

It’s also worth pointing out that NBA 2K has been held up as the gold standard for presentation in a sports game for many years. The series has slipped some in recent times, but while there’s a multitude of reasons NBA 2K became the leader in the clubhouse, I believe it started all the way back near the start of the Xbox 360/PS3 generation with the NBA 2K7 release. For the old-heads out there, I would say that the NBA 2K7 demo is still held up as one of the greatest demos of all-time (we were really lucky that year with demos overall as the NHL 07 demo that introduced the Skill Stick was also a massive moment). It was a great demo for many reasons, but what that demo really started to show was how cool it was to see Nowitzki’s real shot or Shaq’s real free-throw routine, and so on.

NBA 2K made “signature style” a foundational portion of gameplay and presentation. From dribbling to shooting, the personal styles of NBA superstars are what help to define them. It’s those moves and shots that people mimic in gyms or out on the playground.

Now, just “copying” the NBA 2K playbook wholesale would not work for any other sport. You can make note of things like how they make the Eras Mode cooler by doing era-specific broadcast touches, but making LeBron James look and play like LeBron James is still what is going to help out presentation and gameplay the most.

Madden has never really leaned into signature style enough, and I do think that’s finally starting to change. I don’t think you can make a Dak Prescott or Christian McCaffrey standout as much as a James Harden or Steph Curry because there’s just more obvious visual panache that plays out during an NBA game. But there’s certainly a specific way Dak throws and comes to the line. There’s certainly a specific sort of way McCaffrey runs and moves. Those things matter, and EA needs to care about them more.

So when I return to the question of what makes presentation in a sports game elite, I do think the answer should include the words “it depends” somewhere in there. Some elements will matter in every sports game, but other components depend on the real sport. In part, these games exist to accentuate our love for the real sport we watch on TV, and so the presentation needs to be able to tap into that and help make those same things blossom in the video game.