EA are bringing their popular Madden series to the Revolution, and will be making use of the Revolution controller's special abilities...

Update: (original post follows below)
The newly christened IGN Wii has posted an excellent interview with John Schappert, head of EA Canada (and co-founder of Tiburon studios, the shepherds of the Madden franchise). We have highlighted points and segments from the interview, followed by our comments. You can find the interview in its entirety here.

• Schappert is apparently a self-described "Nintendo fanboy"
• EA Canada has a sizeable team (itself divided into mutliple teams working on multiple titles) dedicated exclusively to Wii development and resources. They have had development kits "since last year" (presumably directly following Nintendo's announcement)
• Repeat: Madden is only one of multiple titles currently under heavy development.
• Madden will be playable at E3
• Gestures a-plenty and more confirmation of the nunchuck's motion-sensing capabilities:
  John Schappert: So, you take the controller, jerk it up to snap. Quarterback now has the ball. Your passing icons are now up. Take the wand controller and you'll see that the four directions on its D-Pad represent four of your receivers; the A button is your fifth receiver. Point to one of those receivers that you want to receive the ball and with your hand gesture a throwing motion to pass. Now, the harder you throw, the more that's going to be a bullet pass. The softer and the more you lob a throw, the more that it's going to be a lob. When you receive the ball, you run with the analog stick on the nunchuck and if you want to juke, you use the nunchuck to gesture it. And if you want to stiff-arm, you use the wand.
• There will be force feedback.
• A promising snippet:
  IGN Wii: The Wii's controller lends itself to the ability to design and literally draw your own plays in Madden's playbook. Will the title feature this potentially awesome option?
  
  John Schappert: You know, there is a lot of stuff that we're not yet unveiling. I think you're going to get a great glimpse of how Madden is going to play on Wii at E3 2006. But there is so much, like you're alluding to, that we can do with this wand - stuff that wouldn't be easy to do without the controller. All that stuff is right there and we're looking at it and saying, "What can we get done? What's going to be great and let's make sure everything we do will be great." We've got a lot of stuff that we're chewing on and we're not really telling everyone what we're doing just yet, but there are a lot of good ideas and that's certainly one of them.
• Madden Wii looking great? On graphics:
  John Schappert: I don't think I would agree with the GameCube 1.5 estimate. I would say that I think the Wii should be evaluated by itself. I think it's a unique device and I think what makes it unique is the controller. As for graphics, we'll be showing Madden in 480p and 16x9 widescreen mode running at 60 frames per second. I think it looks great. I think it looks really good. It's also kind of hard for me to judge any of these machines before they're final. We get updates to all kinds of hardware quite often as the stuff is being revved and it's always getting better. I can tell you that we had a couple of guys from Tiburon come by and they hadn't gotten hands-on with the controller, aside from some demos. They thought Madden for Wii looked stunning and played great. So my answer is that it's a unique system and we're going to maximize our power for it. I think the games are going to look really good.
• The game is not a port, though it utilizes pooled resources such as advanced AI routines developed previously.
• EA is targeting the game for a fall launch release and the game will have online multiplayer.

It doesn't come as a huge shock, but it is good to know that publishing behemoth EA are developing their Madden franchise for Revolution - and with completely new controls. Development has been headed up by EA's British Columbia studio, and will apparently be controlled by various gestures replicating a players activities on the field.

The ball can be passed with a throwing gesture, and unsuprisingly the faster you throw, the faster the ball goes on screen. Sweeping the controller in a upward motion allows you to kick the ball, while weaving through players can be achieved by jerking the controller from side to side while running.

An EA Canada spokesman had some interesting words to say: "I don't think Revolution consumers want straight ports. We want to bring out games that are great for the Revolution. And that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to take our expertise, and happily having a great football engine that we can count on solves a lot of problems. You don't have to sit there and worry about, 'Let's get the game to play great football AI.' It's more about, 'Let's get the game to play great on the Revolution with a brand new, unique control device.' Which is really the problem that we think all of our games should be solving on the Revolution."

An interesting and welcome ethic indeed. We'll be seeing more of this title at E3.