I’m now convinced that EA Sports has my phone tapped. I literally had a conversation on the phone last night talking about how this year’s Madden was vastly improved in so many areas over last years iteration. But that said, there were still things I missed from the last gen version of the series — things like trading cards.
Well here they are … sort of. Cards will contain players, coaches, and jersey options, but special ability or perk cards offering up things like “rocket arm” or “scrambling legs” don’t look like they made the next-gen transition. You will however be able to collect cards and do something new with them — build a custom team.
Cards will apparently come in different flavor decks (Bronze, Silver, and Gold) with each deck costing a different amount of “points” and each deck containing higher quality players than the previous. Points won’t cost you money (which is refreshing) but will instead be earned via on-field achievements. It also looks like there will be periodic “weekly deals” offering up discounts on the rare cards.
Collecting players from the same professional or college team will grant special on the field rating boots and different instances of a single player will be able to exist on the same team. So, while you will need to build your team with lower level players at first, with a little dedication and hard work, it won’t be long before your squad resembles the John Madden Ultimate “Brett Favre” Team shown above. Boom!
The Madden 10 “Ultimate Team” feature will be available for free sometime in January via download on Xbox LIVE and PlayStation Network. Below are some screen images provided by EA Sports. What do you think of this latest addition to the game?
