Madden 10 Changes the NFL Draft World

Last Saturday as I was watching the NFL Draft, I decided to check in on Madden 10, which hits shelves August 14. What I saw literally floored me. (In a good way). The team at Madden re-invented Draft Day.

What do I mean? Well first, they had a scrolling ticker across the top, much like you might expect to find on NFL.com or ESPN.com. Check. But dive deeper. Moments after each pick was announced, up on the Madden site popped screen grabs and highlights of the player... on his new squad! So being a Packer fan I went in to check out BJ Raji deeper. Mind you until about a minute before he was picked (when TV showed him celebrating in his living room), no one knew who the Pack would pick - Raji or Michael Crabtree? Each Madden screen grab showed the official power ratings of the player.



This was incredible, and here's the other Pack first pick, Clay Matthews.


But beyond the revealing of players in their new unis and official ratings (which by the way was a brilliant move as so much of the gameplay of Madden is dependent on player ratings), the Madden product team ran an interactive twitter forum during the unveiling. So here was this world where you had near real-time introductions of players in a way that showed off the strength of Madden, and you connected the product or dev team on Madden to their fans in a way that was super amazing. Here are the Twitter sites: one and two.

Where can this go for them? I'd love to see the combine taken into account next year -- can they extend the Draft a little longer? Can they take this beyond one round? Can they get the newly drafted rookies to comment on their ratings?