EA and NFL Renew Partnership for More Madden and New Games

Electronic Arts, the NFL, and the NFL Players Association renewed their partnership to create new Madden NFL games as well as more titles spreading, the companies announced on Thursday. The EA Sports Madden NFL franchise will remain as the exclusive football simulator for the NFL and EA while EA Sports and the other companies involved will work to develop new experiences. These include games in "new genres," the announcement said, as well as expanded esports experiences. The next new game that's known to be coming from this renewed partnership is Madden NFL 21, a game which has been confirmed for the next-gen Xbox Series X and will get its big reveal trailer in June.

The companies announced some of the details of the renewed agreement in a press release shared this week. Touting the success of the Madden NFL brand both in terms of actual players playing the yearly installments as well as the amount of Madden NFL people have watched, the announcement had EA CEO Andrew Wilson looking ahead to more types of experiences as well as new genres the EA Sports games can explore.

"Building on the most successful year ever for Madden NFL, this is a powerful time for EA SPORTS to come together with the NFL and the NFLPA in this new wide-reaching partnership," Wilson. "Together, we have a tremendous opportunity to entertain more players through new Madden NFL experiences, games in new genres and on new platforms, esports, and new innovations that will grow fans' love of the NFL around the world."

We may not know yet what the new experiences will look like and what all genres EA plans on tapping into with these new games, but we do know some of what to expect from the next Madden NFL game. The latest on the Madden NFL series prior to this announcement came from Microsoft's Xbox Series X gameplay event where we got the first trailer for Madden NFL 21 that confirmed it'd be available on the next-gen console.

The trailer focused more on the evolution of the Madden NFL games leading up to the next release, but there's a reveal trailer event planned for June 1st that'll show more on the game. The holding place for the reveal trailer specifically mentions the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC platforms though, so it looks as though the content we see may be from the current generation of platforms.