Today is the first day in what Microsoft hopes will be a migration of PS2 and Xbox gamers to the Xbox 360.  These are the four million people that every year buy Madden and have yet to move to the current generation of consoles.  I caught Sports Center and NFL Live last night and saw the marketing assault first hand.  Madden '08 was everywhere and in those commercials everyone was playing on an Xbox 360.

It is clear that Microsoft and EA are in agreement to nerf all other versions of Madden '08 so that people choose to buy the Xbox 360 version of the game.  Microsoft is paying for all the advertisement of the game and EA has made Madden '08 run at 60 frames per second on the 360 version while all others will run at 30 frames per second.  This will make the 360 version appear buttery smooth as it can display twice the amount of graphics in the same period of time. 

The big issue with most games that have not made the move yet has been price.  A lot of people will wait for that first price drop before they make that purchase.  Sony dropped their PS3 price to $499 last month and just last week Microsoft dropped their consoles prices with the Xbox 360 Pro $349.  Microsoft now has to hope that consumers will see the Madden running better on their console that costs $150 less and decide to pickup a 360 along with Madden '08.

It is still very early in this hardware life cycle and not all the folks that play game consoles have made decided to purchase a replacement.  By showing that Madden will run the best on the 360 Microsoft hopes to show that their console is better than the PS3.  The question is will people forget the hardware issues and take the plunge?  New models out now will get a three year warranty and should have the hardware improvements.  We will find out when the August NPDs come out the week before Halo 3 is released.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/gaming/2007-08-13-madden-nfl-08_N.htm