It’s a yearly tradition: Somebody boots up the latest version of Madden, plays the Super Bowl, and comes up with a winner. And this year’s is…
The Denver Broncos. At least that’s according to EA. Here’s the whole video, a yearly EA tradition:
Sorry, there’s no Manningface in the video. And yes, Madden is predicting snow in New Jersey, a game that goes into overtime, and the Broncos to win, but only just, with a punt.
So, how accurate is the Madden Super Bowl simulation? Pretty accurate: In the ten years EA has run the game, they’ve been wrong twice about the winner, although the point spread is pretty much anybody’s guess. More often than not they screw that up wildly, but hell, nobody’s perfect.
Still, when Madden is wrong about the Super Bowl, it’s wrong in some pretty staggering ways. It predicted the Patriots would win in 2008 38-30, and instead there was a long slog of a game that ended with the Giants winning 17-14 and endless 18-1 jokes. It argued that the Steelers would defeat the Packers in 2011, which was convincing until the Steelers got bulldozed in the fourth quarter. So there’s a little leeway here.
Of course, one can argue that since this isn’t a full season simulation, this is like arguing a coin flip decides who wins the Super Bowl. But we’ll see when the game is broadcast Sunday.