Bottom line = Gameplay matters.
I bought a 360 last year, and bought Madden 07 for it. I loved Madden 2004 & 2005 on the Xbox, as well as being a big fan of NFL 2K5 from 2k sports.
I tried, I really did try to get into the next gen Madden. But the play was unrealistic, the characters too blocky, and most importantly, I couldn't change the cameral angle, so as good as the graphics were, since the players were so far away, the old Xbox 2K5 game still looked better on my HDTV.
I thought the last two madden games on the 360 were really poor. This year's version, from the trailers I've seen on gametrailers.com look to be the same crap. Horrible animations, no control over the camera angles, no "create a playbook", nothing that would make me want to buy their game.
So I was optimistic when I heard that All Pro Football 2K8 was coming out. Then I saw the trailer, and now I'm really excited. Yeah, it's missing franchise mode, and yeah that's a downside, but the upside is that the graphics are top notch, and the animations, touch physics, and overall detail quality are LIGHT YEARS ahead of Madden. That's just from the trailer, I can't wait to actually play the game.
EA needs to stop resting on their laurels and get with the program. They've lost their market share with the NBA game, they can't release an MLB game, and if they don't get on it, they're going to lose out on the NFL in a few years when their BS contract is up. EA makes bad football games now, and that's something hard to fathom, because they used to be so good and built a legion of dedicated Madden players.
Just my $.02.
