Last October, 2K Sports employees and Joe Montana both teased a motion capture session for an unknown football game. While the obvious elephant in the room is 2K Sports planning to put together another football title, a member of their team revealed in December their brand logo aligned with Joe Montana in a viral tweet.
An anonymous poster on Operation Sports soon revealed Joe Montana Football 16 would be releasing this summer exclusive for Windows Platforms Xbox One and PC. Due to the EA and NFL licensing agreement, multi-platform titles (or releases on PlayStation and Xbox brands) are banned unless their first party releases.
In the past, Microsoft had their own internal and very successful exclusive studio XSN Sports (previous home to NFL Fever), but closed down due to a rumored threat of losing support from Electronic Arts. Now with their relationship at an all-time high, competition is something that wouldn’t affect the mainstream sales for the King of the gridiron; but would definitely give hardcore football gamers the closest thing to NFL 2K5 – over a decade later.
I’m sorry, but I can’t sit by and watch this any longer.
I love and respect a number of people working on this game and having met the man and hung around him a number of times I have a profound respect for Mr. Montana. He’s just a great person. But I disagree with how they’re dealing with the public and how they plan to continue to do so. You just have no idea how long they’re planning to drag even basic info out.
I’m not on the team and I’m not under an NDA so I’m not under any obligation to keep anything I know a secret. There are some things going on that gamers need to know about now, and the way they’ve planned to do these things just isn’t reasonable. What I’m about to tell you are things they literally only plan to tell you about 3-4 weeks before release and I’m sorry, you don’t deserve to be strung along like that.
I know you won’t believe me, but I can assure you this is accurate, and in time you will see these truths unfold. I feel you need to know so you can prepare as a gamer (save up money, make arrangements and plans, etc).
– First and foremost, this game will be for XBOX One and PC only. This is why they haven’t mentioned platforms. They’re taking early advantage of the Windows 10 cross-plat tech and the game will be out as part of 10’s 3-month launch cycle in the middle of this year.
So now that you know, you can make plans to purchase an XBOX One or Windows 10 if you don’t have one of them already.
– The game is called Joe Montana NFL Football 16. This is an NFL game. First-party stipulations that the NFL has always left open & the NFL’s exclusive relationship with Microsoft allows for Microsoft to have an NFL game. Microsoft Studios is the publisher. Microsoft is deadly serious about gaining ground and winning the console war (doubtful to happen at this point though) and throwing tons of money at incubation and trying to buy new IP that they can turn into big series’ titles is top priority for them right now. They believe this game can be many times bigger than MLB The Show due to the larger NFL fanbase, and because so many XBOX One owners identify as serious NFL fans.
– The game was demoed and it went well. Actually, “well” is an understatement. People went crazy. NDA’s were and still are in place for them. That’s why you haven’t heard anyone saying anything, but a lot of people are having a very hard time because what they seen was unbelievable and it’s been impossible to go back to Madden or even take Madden seriously after that. It’s like, how you felt when you had an NES and you saw Sega Genesis for the first time. The step up in quality is THAT big.