It's the eve of E3 - sort of - and EA still isn't talking about what will become of Madden football on our personal computers.
It was way back in April of last year that EA Sports chief Peter Moore leveled with gamers and said that the mighty Madden franchise wouldn't be coming to PC.
So there was no PC version of Madden NFL 09.
And then, this spring, while I was being shown Madden NFL 10, I inquired about the lack of a PC version of that game. An EA Sports rep told me there was "more to come" on the PC Madden front but there would not be a Madden NFL 10 for PC.
Today, I reached out for clarification, and received a statement EA's been using for several weeks: "We have no plans to release Madden NFL 10 on the PC this year. We continue to explore ideas to revitalize the PC for sports games and the types of games that are best suited to the platform, and this remains our goal for the Madden NFL franchise."
I do recall that back in November, when my job involved sitting on the other side of the wall from Kurt Loder, I attended a New York City investor conference and asked Moore what his 2008 EA Sports highlight was. He cited a Korean release of FIFA Online 2 for PC, a free-to-play, micro-transaction-based version of a game that most of the rest of the world plays the old-fashioned way on consoles.
That's the other cleat I've been waiting to drop. That's what I thought would be part of the EA Sports showcase I attended in New York a few weeks ago that featured Madden for the consoles. But nothing like that was there.
EA isn't saying. All's silent regarding the next Madden PC project for now.