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Madden 19 Release Date, Deluxe Cover Star & Early Features Announced
Madden NFL 19 is now officially slated for release on August 10 (PS4/Xbox One), and today developer EA Tiburon also announced that Terrell Owens is the cover star of the Hall of Fame Edition – which can be played early on August 7 (EA Access members can play starting on August 2 on Xbox One).
In terms of feature details, Madden 19 is advertising motion and animation advances allowing for better ball-carrier responsiveness, including pushing your blockers to avoid running into them and one-cut acceleration.
Connected Franchise mode is linking to a new player progression system built around positional archetypes which are also linked to your team's overall offensive and defensive schemes. Custom draft classes are also being added to CFM, allowing players to mix past and present players in Franchise.
Finally, Madden Ultimate Team is adding MUT Solo Battles which sounds similar to FIFA's Squad Battles where you compete as a single-player against user-teams to climb up the leaderboard and reap rewards along the way. Player upgrading is done through "training tools," which may be a replacement for last year's contentious and costly Power Up system.
If you pre-order the standard edition you get to choose an Elite player and five Gold Team Fantasy Packs, while Hall of Fame Edition pre-orders add an Elite Hall of Fame Legend, a Training Pack, seven Gold packs, and the three-day early access.
Our Take
It's good to see all the major beats of gameplay, CFM, and MUT addressed, and I'm intrigued how deep the team schemes for CFM run. Previous years have had coaching schemes like 3-4 defense vs. 4-3, and players that did or didn't fit into that scheme, so I'm curious how this is different. On the MUT front, I hope player upgrading replaces Power Ups, and it'll be interesting to see if this slows down any harsh thresholds and overall card inflation in the mode.
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