As the 2020 NFL season near’s its coda with Super Bowl 55, Google and EA are planning to let cloud gamers kickoff their own Super Bowl run with the impending launch of Madden 21. The Jan. 28 launch of the annualized NFL simulator could serve as hope to soccer fans awaiting the arrival of EA’s FIFA series on Stadia.
Cloud gamers will get the chance to scrimmage with Madden 21 in a free weekend, running from Jan. 28 to 31.
Madden 21’s free weekend is being offered to all of the game’s platforms: consoles, PC and cloud. The Madden NFL 21: Superstar Edition will also be heavily discounted with a 60 percent price cut being offered from Jan. 28 to Feb. 8.
The free weekend coincides with the NFL’s Pro Bowl weekend, which leans more on virtual interactions this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. EA’s Twitch channel is already hyping up the lead-up to the Pro Bowl with content rolling out and ramping up as the event nears.
While neither EA or Google have given us a date to look forward to FIFA 21, the release of Madden 21 and other EA blockbusters like Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order are a good sign for soccer fans who’ve been reading tea leaves and entrails.
Whenever FIFA does arrive on Stadia, it’ll help round out a sports section that, up until the end of last year, featured only Codemaster’s racing games. Late last year, 2K Sports added the NBA 2k and PGA Tour 2K franchises to Google’s cloud gaming platform.
With Sony possibly loosening its grip on its MLB the Show franchise and bring it to PC, AKA Stadia’s skeleton, the only major sport missing from cloud gaming would be hockey (sorry MMA devotees). Unfortunately, there’s no news of a PC port of EA’s NHL franchise to help us rationalize this hope – we will anyway though.