Worldwide PS3 releases for the week of August 13th
by Jem Alexander 
{ Aug 13th 2007 at 10:40AM }
So we hear that there's this game coming out this week. "Madden" we think it's called. It's supposed to be a pretty big deal. It better be, as it's the only game we're going to see released until the end of this month. Full release list is as follows:US Games
EU Games
- No new releases
Asian Games
- No new releases
Don't forget, non-American American football fans, PS3s are region free. So feel free to import this game like crazy, if you want. Release dates are constantly subject to change, so call ahead before wasting a trip to the shops.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Roman @ Aug 13th 2007 10:52AM
PS3 region free? Isn't it true that it's only region free as long as you use HDMI?
Or did I misread that somewhere.
Maurice_Chavez @ Aug 13th 2007 11:00AM
Huh?
Wah?
No.
It is region free, movies aren't.
On topic, first review I read said it was choppy, so I'll rent and see for myself before I buy this. I'd rather have PS2 graphics than choppy framerate.
Opus @ Aug 14th 2007 3:34PM
I believe the Games are region free but the movies are not.
tomtom @ Aug 13th 2007 11:12AM
it is choppy, like 30 frames per second i hear. plus it's full of jaggies.
sports games on Ps3 i guess aren't developed very well. if you own both systems it's recommended to just get this for 360.
i hear it's not terribly noticeable but, if you can, go Madden for the 360.
Supino @ Aug 13th 2007 11:18AM
your honest answer will soon be accused of trolling, tomtom.
again - I'm a proud owner of both systems. But 360 got the upper hand with framerate and achievements...
JL @ Aug 13th 2007 11:20AM
Boycott! Screw EA!
Darkdrium777 @ Aug 13th 2007 11:19AM
It's EA Sports guys. That's the reason why the frames are bad. Because they don't want to optimize for PS3. They say it's too hard. Poor them. :/
Darkdrium777 @ Aug 13th 2007 11:34AM
I would be ashamed if I made a game that runs at 30FPS on a new generation system with choppy framerates. I mean, come on... :/
Thomas @ Aug 13th 2007 11:34AM
I heard that EA was going to release a Patch to improve the frame rate.
linton @ Aug 13th 2007 11:45AM
EA have let us uk gamers down time n time again on the ps2 side of things anyway, looks like there's no change when it comes to the ps3 either(to hard to program!? you lazy bastards!)
streetball4life @ Aug 13th 2007 12:01PM
EA just didnt want to pay their employees the extra Overtime pay to optimize it for the PS3. They got a ton of negative press not long ago for working their employees ridiculously long hours and not paying them Overtime. LAZY LAZY LAZY and horrible ethics. We as gamers should just not buy the game and force them to make better. If your gonna make a half ass game then release it for half price. I dont plan on buying it and supporting EA's control over football games.
el hazard @ Aug 13th 2007 12:09PM
yeah, you can do that.
or you can get the 360 version. =D
money_mike_preme @ Aug 13th 2007 12:12PM
madden sucks anyways...i haven't played madden since 2k sports came out with NfL 2k for the dreamcast. Pick plays on the vmu to hide what your doing from your opponent was genius. Personally...im going to pass on this one...dont care if theres a better 360 version...i sold my 360 for my ps3...best decision i've made in my whole life after my 360 scratched up my copy of Call of Duty beyond repair.
never$$hort @ Aug 13th 2007 12:14PM
EA is a fukin joke... Good thing I hate Madden and pretty much all sports games in general cause this would seriously piss me off big time that they made another half-assed game for PS3... If you guys can stand to live without your Madden I would seriously suggest boycotting those MoFo's... They arent gettin no more $$$$ from me thats for sure...
Highlader @ Aug 13th 2007 12:24PM
Children put away your flame throwers. Gods, just for once I would like the pissing contest between Xbox 360 owners and PS3 owners to touch reality for a secon
30fps is too choppy? Hello? I have some news for you children, every TV picture you ever looked at until true 720p60 arrives is at 30 frames per seconds or less.
Want some more? OK, movies, the gold standard of image quality run at an incredible 24 frames per second.
Oh yes, I know 60fps sounds impressive, and indeed it is. I mean it's 60 isn't it? Twice 30. Must be good right? Bollocks. It makes very little visible difference and zero difference to game play. At 60 frames per second, care to guess how long each frame is visible? 16 thousandths of a second. Even at 30 frames a second each frame is only visible for 33 thousandths of a second.
Is there a difference? Sure, if you TV is any good, then you might just see that it's a bit smoother, but really there's not a lot in it. The only review I have seen that talks of choppiness is a preview with a link to someones genius You Tube video purporting to be the 360 and PS3 versions of madden side by side. If you can see through the low res blocky crapiness of the You Tube video then you get the following impression, they look the same. If you see any choppiness it is either the playback of the crappy low quality You Tube video or manipulation of the source. My favorite part is when they slow the playback to 50% and then 25% is if that will show anything, it doesn't
At the end of the day, EA decided to cap the PS3 framerate at 30 frames per second. The PS3 version of the game is actually capable of running somewhere between 30 and 60 frames per second, but EA wasn't able to finish the optimization in time for release, so they couldn't guarantee 60 frames per second on PS3. They therefore decided to cap the frame rate at 30. The only choppiness in the game on the PS3 is in the imagination of the observer. The 30frames per second picture will be completely steady and smooth.
Incidentally 720p is available at the following frame rates in NTSC land 24, 30, 60, and 25 and 50 in PAL land. 30 frames per second is still progressive scan, and still very nice to watch.
It's hilarious watching various reviewers and others looking so very hard for things to critique on the PS3. I remember all the dire predictions that were around before launch. Then the PS3 turned out to deliver on pretty much all the promises made. Now with Xbox failing to deliver anything up to 33% of the time, some reviewers (oh so very objective they are too....) seem to be literally going out of their way to nitpick games on PS3 as if they can somehow make up for the problems on Xbox.
Oh well children, if you want to argue that 60fps is somehow so very much better, go on, it'll make no difference.
BTW have a look at this link to aid your understanding of 720p...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/720p
PSN: ummfada @ Aug 13th 2007 12:30PM
Thats a nice essay, but I am just boycotting because they said it was not possible and we all know it is bullsh!t
Stan @ Aug 13th 2007 12:32PM
I thought LAIR is coming out as well this week, according to BestBuy ad flyer available on Wed after 2pm? Am I missing something here?
Tyranis1 @ Aug 13th 2007 12:54PM
^ This guy is so ture you guys can learn something from him 30fps is no difference from 60fps as long as the fram rate dose not go below 24 frames I have been saying this from day one on the playstation forums
MYPS3KilledMy360 @ Aug 13th 2007 12:38PM
O yeawh high octain football at 30fps. whos ready for some action packed madden madness. Wtf its not worth it bring back NFL 2k we all know 60fps is possible its way too late in the season EA to pull that card.
Darkdrium777 @ Aug 13th 2007 12:41PM
Actually, you are right Highlander. 30FPS won't be differentiable from 60FPS if they both run smooth. Truth be told, the 30FPS version doesn't, and that's why it sucks.
Popfrogs @ Aug 13th 2007 12:49PM
I bet it's like this:
60FPS on the X360 with massive tearing (like most games on that system)
30FPS on the PS3 with no tearing
wem003 @ Aug 13th 2007 12:58PM
Folks - if you don't like it - don't buy it.
For me, I am getting so freaking sick of FPS's that all look the same.
I'd much rather have Madden and work through a franchise and get some good online play.
Highlander - great post. Good job explaining how this will really work.
chaod @ Aug 13th 2007 1:56PM
to those pointing out that cinema and tv typically display at 24 fps i have one very important point to make. cinema and tv (and anything recorded on a camera) blur moving images something chronic. if you pause a dvd on a close up of someone running you will not be able to see a clear outline of their legs or arms - they will blend in with the background and the previous frame. for example compare these to screens i took from an episode of lost
http://img249.imageshack.us/img249/3263/screenshotvlcmediaplayexe4.png
http://img105.imageshack.us/img105/6423/screenshotvlcmediaplayeds6.png
the truth is 30 fps is bad. 50+ fps is where i try to get my games running. 60 fps is the target for "absolute smoothness". anything over 60 fps and you can't really tell.
i blame EA, but this kind of thing was inevitable. these games are cash cows for the big corporations. they want to put minimum effort in and make maximum profit. the 360 lends it's self well to these games: it is a logical extrapolation of the previous generation of consoles and the old techniques work in the same way, they can just up the poly count, give it some nice post-processing effects and voila - "next gen" game is made. unfortunately (in this regard) the ps3 is not a "normal" machine. it takes things way more than 1 step in to the next generation with it's massive emphasis on parallel processing. it's a gamble by sony that this is the trend of things to come but it's a very safe bet. look at how intel's core 2 duo pretty much saved the company from amd, and the next processors coming out from the 2 companies have 4 cores... the trend is obvious - the future is parallel processing.
i suppose my main point i want to make is that i really couldnt care less whether these supposedly next gen games that get churned out year after year are on the ps3 at all, because i simply wont be playing them for the reasons mentioned in this article. they are slopily made and have no soul. they are there to make a company money. being fun is secondary. you will not see games made by people who care about games running this badly. look at little big planet. those guys really have a passion for games and they made the effort. you can see it everywhere in that game. 1080p at a solid 60 fps and i'd bet it looks 10 times better than any shitty sports sim ea makes. LBP is a great idea, and constructed brilliantly by the looks of things
i think GTA will be the ultimate test. R* are shit hot and really do care about the quality of their games. can they make a cross platform GTA4 run flawlessly on PS3? my money says yes, and it will probably run better than the 360 version (hard disk data cache anyone?)
Castor @ Aug 13th 2007 2:52PM
@chaod
You comment on how the images at 30fps look blurred when you pause them on a dvd. So what. I don't know any one who is really going to care what the game looks like paused. At 30fps the game is going to look a little better than the 24fps that the dvd is run at while in motion. The human eye can't even recognize motion that fast. That is why the movies are at 24fps because that is faster than the eye can recognize teh images so it appears smooth when playing. I don't think you need to worry about the game being blurred during a pause because unlike the film for a movie that doesn't have a quick enough shutter to grab the image before the legs or arms move enough to notice the game will have each frame rendered and give you a clean image at pause whereever you stopped it at. If done correctly you won't be able to tell the difference between 30 and 60 fps while running.
johnxmzzhang @ Aug 13th 2007 2:55PM
Highlader
You sir are a idiot... First Typing a long ass essay on here will not get anyone interested enough to read it, but hearing the gist of your comment I can tell you that the frame rate creates a big difference. As PC gamers we spend hundreds of dollars on high end graphics cards, and the whole purpose of doing that is to get the frame rate up. With better frame rates you can see smoothness in the movements, and that makes the biggest difference in your reaction on fps games... You may not be able to notice it, but many people do so if the ps3 is capable of supporting higher fps than why not impliment it. I agree that EA was too lazy to try and work out a better version for the ps3...
chaod @ Aug 13th 2007 3:04PM
@castor
no, i'm afraid you missed my point. the blurring i mentioned you get in dvd's and tv is a very effective way of covering up how crap 24 fps is. 24 or 30 fps certainly isn't the limit of the human eye.
humans dont see things in frames anyway. we just have a constant stream of light coming in to our eye and depending on how awake and alert you are you brain interprets that light. this is one of the reasons why when you are pumped up with adrenaline you have better reactions. but i digress.
video games do not do this; they are made up of crisp polygons (ignoring modern blur effects). so they lose that mask that covers up how shit video really is at 24 fps.
trust me on this one, i have a big ass framerate slider in front of me to prove it :p
http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/8954/screenshotao4.png
Tru-blue @ Aug 13th 2007 3:12PM
I always take reviews into consideration. And everybody's input into the debate between 30fps vs 60fps is interesting. It's appreciated as well keeping the rest of us informed on all the tech specs.
However, even when I read a negative review for a game, I always rent it for myself to experience it first hand. On several occasions, I did enjoy a game that got trashed by reviews. It all comes down to the individual's/reviewer's opinion and tastes and dislikes.
I'll most likely end up renting Madden '08 to see for myself how it runs. If it runs smoothly or if it doesn't. If it does have jaggies or it doesn't. But I posted a comment on an earlier topic regarding the boycotting of EA sports games on the PS3 if EA continues to have a lazy attitude when it comes to optimizing games on the PS3. I opted for football fans to maybe look at 2K All-Pro Football instead of Madden '08. I'm hoping for the re-emergence of 2K's football franchise so that it can continue to be a threat to EA's Madden's.
RPGJock @ Aug 13th 2007 4:21PM
EA is not thinking about Sony anymore. The very few TV commercials I see are XBox 360 version of Madden. I am pretty sure that the Madden Challenge are going to be sp0nsored and using XBox 360. They should at least should a PS2 league since most people will have it on the PS2 in the end.
Castor @ Aug 13th 2007 3:31PM
@chaod
I apologize. I was trying to go from memory on the refresh rate of the brain and human eye and for some reason I thought it was around 1/20th of a second. upon further review you are right it is 1/50th of a second so your statement of 50+fps is about right. After that it really doesn't matter as the brain isn't going to refresh and grab the extra frames per second anyway.
http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/2001-11/1006763147.Ns.r.html
link to a neuroscience paper on the subject.
Tru-blue @ Aug 13th 2007 3:36PM
Also, it was mentioned earlier in this thread, I saw in Best Buy and Circuit City ads yesterday that they were going to Lair this Wed by 2pm.
Was there another delay for the game that I missed out on or is it really coming out this Wednesday?
Mak @ Aug 13th 2007 5:35PM
Boycot this title. EA are lazy mutherfookers.
JL @ Aug 13th 2007 5:36PM
I get headaches from games with slow framerates like FEAR and Tony Hawk. Games like Resistance give me no issues at all. So dont tell me framerate doesnt make a difference.
Titty Pink @ Aug 13th 2007 7:55PM
Yeah, I'll have to pass on the next round of shitty Madden games. It won't suck because it's 30 fps. It'll suck because it's Madden, and people have no other options as NFL licensed games go. The framerate got pretty bad on both systems last installment. I wonder if you'll be able to stop tight end post plays. Will McNabb and Vick be able to drop back 60 yards and throw acurately while on the move? Unfortunately, there are probably people in line right now for Madden. Simply no incentive to make it better, and the xb360 network...I mean G4 always gives the thing sports game of the year. However, at E3 there was chatter about the 09 build starting on the PS3, and no one denied it. (of course no one confirmed it either). Madden hasn't been worth a damn since the first PS2 version. 2K has always killed EA in sports games, especially football. Their deep pockets have doomed us all to half assed football games for a while...