Madden NFL 22 Cover Athletes Revealed; PC Gets the Shaft Again

Two athletes will grace the cover while PC gamers get the shaft once again.

EA announced today the two cover athletes that will grace the er, cover, of the next Madden title. For Madden NFL 22, both Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes will be featured on the cover of the annual football title.

Both athletes are Super Bowl champions, both are MVPs, and both are "icons of sport culture." EA says that both Brady and Mahomes will be featured across all editions of Madden NFL, including Madden NFL Mobile.

But hey, enough about them, let's talk about the game since that seems to be what this press release is doing. EA will used the power of next-gen consoles to "deliver the raw energy, emotion, and unpredictability of the NFL through brand-new Dynamic Gameday." This feature will be powered by three new features in Madden NFL 22: Gameday Atmosphere, Gameday Momentum, and Next Gen Stats: Star -Drive AI.

Gameday Atmosphere* connects players to their NFL fandom through the crowds, environments, and presentation elements that enhance and impact every game. New Gameday Momentum* performance-based mechanics, including Home Field Advantage* which provides a unique game condition tailored to each NFL teamâ€™s stadium atmosphere, swing momentum, bringing the tangible influence of momentum to life on the field. Lastly, Next Gen Stats: Star-Driven AI*, powered by real world player data that will evolve throughout the season, changes AI behavior and team tendencies to make NFL superstars and the personality of each team more true-to-life.

Oh yeah, you see those little asterisks there next to those cool new features? They'll only be available for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S versions of Madden NFL 22. Apparently EA still aren't offering up these "next-gen" experiences on the PC for... like... whatever reason. Last year, I believe their excuse for not adding these enhanced features to the PC release was that it would change the system requirements and they didn't want to do that after release.

You can rest assured though that EA is still selling a PC version of the game! Just don't expect feature parity yet again. Maybe this is their way of killing off PC sales so that they can use the excuse of "poor sales numbers on PC" to stop releasing on that platform again.

Madden NFL 22 will be released on August 20 for the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Stadia, and PC via Origin and Steam.

I'm also going to warn you right now. If you have seen almost any popular TikTok video in the past month or so, you're going to hate the song that they chose for the reveal trailer. You'll understand what I mean, but don't say I didn't warn you.