14 DAY TRIAL // Calvin Johnson, who is a wide receiver playing for the Detroit Lions, has been chosen by fans to be the public face for this year’s edition of the Madden NFL American football simulation, after a seven-week-long voting process that started out with 64 candidates.
EA Sports says that 19.6 million people took part in the voting, whittling down the number of athletes first to 32 and then ranking them according to popularity.
Calvin Johnson was the sixth seed in the voting process and, in the final round, he faced-off against Cam Newton, whom he only beat by 52 to 48 percent when the votes were tallied.
Before reaching the Madden NFL 13, cover Johnson has beaten athletes like Matt Stafford, Dwayne Bowe, Arian Foster, Rob Gronkowski and Aaron Rodgers.
Anthony Stevenson, who is the marketing director working on Madden NFL 13 at EA Sports, stated, “This year’s cover voting campaign had more rounds, more players and more votes than ever before, generating great conversations and debates amongst the fans and NFL players across multiple ESPN platforms and throughout social media.
“The amount of support that Johnson generated nationally and in his home market of Detroit was staggering.”
With the cover star announced, EA Sports will shift its public relations campaign for Madden NFL 13 to focus on the core features of the game.
The developers have already announced that they are working on a new defensive system for the Artificial Intelligence of the new game, called “read and react,” which will make it harder for players to exploit obvious weaknesses.
EA Sports is also teasing a June 4 announcement for Madden NFL 13, thus changing one gameplay element in order to generate “the most authentic football experience to date, blurring the line between virtual and reality.”
Madden NFL 13 is set to arrive on the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 in late August.