A new Madden 08 Producer's Blog with  EA's Danny  Doeberling has been posted to the  Madden site.  It goes through some of the little hidden gems of Madden 08.  It's a  pretty fun read..

"Hey, what’s going on gamers? I’m Danny Doeberling, a producer on the gameplay team currently handling all things post play. I’m here today to talk about some of the fun stuff that I’m working on that I think you’ll enjoy stumbling on when the game finally gets to your living room.

That’s right - I’m talking about player specific celebrations. Every year we try to get reference of our favorite celebrations, get them at motion capture, and get them assigned to the player that did them. EA never really has done too much to publicize these, so I thought this would be a good forum to show some of these things off and get some of your ideas of what you want to see in the game.

Let’s start with my favorite one. This is such a great video clip that makes me laugh every time I see it. It’s from Kelley Washington in the preseason, and definitely worth checking out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMuvjLcuvTI 

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Gaming-Age.com has posted their All-Pro Football 2K8 Preview and they've also posted some new screenshots as well.

"Let the Debates on Ranking Football’s Best BEGIN!

The first thing you’ll do to start playing is create your custom team. Step one is drafting your first eleven players from the Legends roster, which is broken into three categories: gold, silver and bronze. Passers, runners and receivers dominate the list, but there are plenty of defensive players to choose from, as well. There are also offensive linemen if you’re a lifetime member of the Tony Munoz fan club.

The rest of your roster spots are filled in by randomly generated players with fictional names. You can choose their general strengths (run blocking vs. pass blocking, for example), but won’t be creating each player. Legends are marked on the field at all times by a star at their feet, so there’s no mistaking a legend for a newbie.

Contrary to popular expectations, you can create custom players from scratch (Viva Ron Mexico!). Created players are placed into the Legends roster and can be selected the same way as other legends, so they take up one of your eleven spots.

Created players also have access to the special abilities of legends. Instead of traditional player ratings in various categories (ranked 1-100), APF 2K8 uses a special abilities system to differentiate players. Legends have qualities that fit the player, such as Dan Marino’s quick release, John Elway’s rocket arm and Walter Payton’s unique, and dangerous, stutter step. We didn’t get enough play time in to see how non-legends players are distinguished from each other, but the system is definitely an interesting idea and we’re anxious to put it through its paces."

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Check it out HERE from IGN. 

"The last two years of Madden on next-gen have not lived up to the hype. It was the only pigskin offering out there so we tolerated it, enjoyed it as much as we could, and had several nights of heated matchups between friends - though never with two people on one team. This year Madden is back in a big way, with all of the trimmings that you'd expect from a true next-gen football experience. EA just recently played host to its big, blowout pre-E3 event. Nineteen games were in attendance and Madden was easily among the best shown.

First off, this year's game isn't skipping out on the features that we've become accustomed to on the original Xbox offerings. Fantasy draft is back for all the fantasy gurus out there, owner mode is in, though EA was mum about the details when we spoke to David Ortiz, the lead producer on the game. Even though we couldn't squeeze out the specifics, it's just good to know that our old favorites are back..."
 

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EA released a new Producers Blog with Ian Cummings explaining the new sideline catches as well as a video to accompany the blog.

Here's a link to the vid... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMpnahHNnjA

" Hello again faithful blog readers…welcome back for another installment of game play goodness by your old pal Ian Cummings. I was really happy to see the feedback from my last post regarding gang tackles, so here's another follow up for a highly requested video...sideline catches. This should give you an idea of what to expect in this area for Madden NFL 08. Disclaimer again - this isn't slick editing or marketing approved really - just me and an extra 5 minutes of my day. There's not all that much to explain either - I think it speaks for itself, but some key points:   

1. You can see how we actually take awareness into account on these videos - a highly rated player like Gates is consistently getting his feet in, but then you can see a player like Vincent Jackson who's rated lower than Gates still can play the catch but possibly not get his feet in. It's a small detail but it really helps separate out some of the elite players, which has been an overarching goal for Madden across the board this year. I really love this aspect too because in previous years, often times we would just not allow a player to play certain catches, where realistically I think probably any NFL receiver or TE (or RB for that matter) can play that catch, but not everyone is as "aware" to get both feet in. I'm curious to hear what you think on that point though…We still do limit animations based on the new spectacular catch rating for this year, but should we do that more or based on awareness too? Do you agree with me in that you'd rather see them attempt the animation and possibly play it out of bounds, or would you rather them just play a normal animation that doesn't even look like they are getting their feet in (a la last year)?   

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