Last year's release of Madden 2000 marked the first time a big-name sports game was brought to the Mac OS in recent memory. The Madden series is largely acclaimed as the best American football game on the market, so it seemed like a logical choice for Westlake Interactive and Aspyr Media. Unfortunately, the game didn't sell anywhere near expectations, and there are currently no announced plans to port Madden 2001. In a recent post to Usenet, Westlake president Mark Adams explained the situation in detail:

Madden did not come close to meeting projections on the Mac. Probably
for many reasons, but certainly a lack of international sales was key.
Aspyr & Westlake knew sales would be pretty much North America only, but
we wanted to try Madden as our first Mac sports title because it
historically does a lot more units than anything else in North America
on the PC.

M2000's slow sales definitely had some impact on Aspyr (and our) choice
not to do Madden 2001, but its more of an effort to regroup, not a
retreat from the sports market. We definitely hope to bring a couple
other sports games to the market in the next year, hopefully ones that
have some more international appeal as well.

And we also want to build the Madden franchise long term on the Mac, and
plan to do as much as possible to bring Madden 2002 to the Mac next year.

We're also trying to figure out a way to support the current Madden 2K
owners (and any who will buy it this Christmas at its bargain price),
especially with player/roster updates. This turns out to be more
complex than we originally thought, the roster files changed format
drastically in 2001, and there are some thorny licensing issues with the
NFL/NFL Players Association that have to be worked out. But we're
definitely hoping to keep everyone happy until we can do the next major
revision.

Madden 2000 Demo (37MB)

Aspyr Media

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