We have a big rumor about the Switch 2 coming from billbil-kun.
Writing for Dealabs, he claims that Madden NFL 26 will mark EA’s signature gridiron football franchise’s return to a Nintendo platform. It will launch on the Switch 2 this August 14, alongside the PC, PlayStation, and Xbox.
According to billbil-kun’s sources, EA will announce Madden NFL 26, including the Switch 2 debut, on or before April 25. It isn’t clear from his explanation but it’s also possible that Switch 2 users will get to choose a Deluxe Edition, which gives them Early Access for three days in advance, and EA Play benefits, which lets subscribers play the game even earlier. Starting at August 11, EA Play subscribers can play the game for 10 hours before having to buy.
A Madden NFL game hasn’t released on any Nintendo console since Madden NFL 13, released all the way back iun 2012 on Wii and Wii U, alongside Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation Vita. At the time, EA claimed they had formed an ‘unprecedented partnership’ with Nintendo to release games on the Wii U, but we know they didn’t actually live up to that promise.
And so we can point to a chicken and the egg situation here, given the lack of information on said ‘unprecedented partnership.’ Was this a deal with real money, a handshake agreement, or just some hyperbolic PR that EA didn’t even talk to Nintendo about? Did EA drop Wii U support because of the console’s market failure? Or was EA’s lack of support a major contributing factor to its failure?
But as we know, EA would go on to regret dropping out on Nintendo on the next generation, as the Switch would prove to be an unprecedented success for the company, and the industry as a whole. EA did bring their FIFA and EA SPORTS FC games to the console, but we all know they could have done much more than that.
We imagine EA was particularly envious of the long tails of Nintendo’s blockbusters, as they had a staggering 72 first-party games on the console that sold at least a million copies. With the Switch 2, they do have a clear rationale for adding the console to their multiplatform releases, as it’s clearly possible to make their games on it at close to the same performance and power metrics as their versions on the Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5.
If anything, these multiplatform sports games may be the proving ground of the Switch 2’s capability to match its peers, but for that, we’re going to have to see if this rumor turns out to be true.
