A few years ago Aspyr Media broke ranks by publishing Madden NFL 2000, a brilliant sports title created by computer sports giants, Electronic Arts. The game, however, failed to meet sales expectations and plans to publish more EA sports titles went by the way side. In a post to the newsgroups, Westlake's Mark Adams, who ported Madden NFL 2000 to the Mac, explains that they tried to bring Madden NFL 2002 to the Mac but in all likelyhood, the title won't see the light of day on the Mac:

Yes, this was true. We really tried to get 2002 to the Mac, but at this point it doesn't look like it will happen. Unfortunately many of the EA Sports games change radically every year, and Madden is one of those. Even in the years where the engine appears to be substantially similar, the underlying code changes quite a bit. One of the hopes for a 2001/2002 Madden for Mac was that we could leverage some of the work from 2000 to make the port come out more quickly and cost less to the publisher. This turns out to not be the case. Basically we end up having 3-4 months to replicate a year worth of PC changes into the Mac version each year.

This coupled with zero international sales for the franchise and lower than projected US sales for 2000 Mac make it very tough to make a case do to 2002.

I wouldn't say the chances are zero- we're still trying to figure out some way to get more EA sports games to the Mac, and who knows, maybe we will find a way. Right now though there are no plans for Madden 2002. We haven't found any magic bullets yet :(

IMG's Madden NFL 2000 review

Westlake Interactive

Aspyr Media

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