I’ve been a staunch boycotter of all EA Madden football games since they locked up the exclusive rights to the NFL license in 2005. I was never a big Madden fan to begin with, but when they removed the option of any competition to their games it left a very bad taste in my mouth. This ended the life of my favorite football series, the 2K games from Sega, so I haven’t played a console football game in about seven years. Thanks EA!

However, a recent announcement may have me changing my mind. EA is still the only game in town, but they’ve announced a new football title called Madden NFL Arcade. This will be a downloadable title for $15 over PSN or XBLA, and instead of the heavy simulation fare of Madden it will feature 5-on-5 sandbox gameplay. Standard rules are suspended; the first person to 30 points wins and players can get power-ups during the game. This sounds a lot like the old arcade baller Blitz, which I had some fun with back in the day.

This title might be just different enough to let me bypass my Anti-Madden directives and pick it up. It sounds very casual, which is perfect for me. My days of playing entire seasons in a single weekend and obsessing over player stats are long gone. I’ll still boycott the yearly Madden titles until the NFL license opens up to other developers, but Madden Arcade might finally get me back into the console football game.