Madden 23 On PC Will Not Have Its New 'FieldSense' Feature

Madden 23 on PC, as with every other sports game released during the past couple of years, is not going to feature a decidedly "next-gen" gameplay addition that is prominent in the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S versions.

(Photo : Steam )
madden 23 steam

That addition is what EA calls "FieldSense," a so-called "physics-informed" feature that is billed to affect Madden 23's gameplay in every way. As reported by PC Gamer, FieldSense adds over 3,500 motion-captured animations that are said to allow players to "predict" what happens next in the play just by looking at the animations play out.

Here is the trailer for Madden 23's FieldSense technology, if you'd like to check it out:

In layman's terms, what happens here is that Madden 23's PC version is going to be the last-gen version yet again. If you get it for Windows, you're not going to get all of the next-gen features that come with the game's PS5 and Xbox Series X/S versions, which is something EA already did with Madden 21 and 22. This marks almost three years that sports games have basically left behind PC players in terms of next-gen gaming, which is something not a lot of fans are fond of - as expected.

Despite this, EA is basically promising that things will change come the next game in the series. Here's what a representative of the company told PC Gamer:

We have a passionate community of Madden players on PC, and it's important to our development team that the PC version of Madden becomes comparable to the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S versions in the future.

That's basically corpo-speak for "sorry folks, we're forcing you to buy next-gen consoles to play our next-gen games for as long as we want to."

Either way, Madden 23 on PC will cost the base $60 - a $10 discount compared to the PS5 and Xbox Series versions. But it will be up to you to decide whether the $10 bucks was worth saving, because it depends on if you actually have the console and an extra $70 to get the game on next-gen.

Madden 23 launches on August 18th.

Sports Games Being Sports Games, Again

As much as this pisses off any sports gamer on PC, it's been this way for the last couple of years as previously said. Virtually every other sports sim out there will always have the last-gen version on PC and focus on making next-gen for the new Sony and Microsoft consoles. Developers and publishers all have their reasons, but this is the one that FIFA 21 executive producer Aaron McHardy had (via Eurogamer):

When we looked at what generation to put the PC game on, we looked at our fans and what capabilities they had with the hardware they have. And when we looked at that, in order to run the gen five game, our min spec would have been at a spot that would have left a lot of people out in the cold not being able to play the game.

In other words, they were concerned that not a lot of people have powerful-enough PCs to run next-gen games. And that is true in many aspects. However, it also willingly ignores the fact that not a lot of people can still get next-gen consoles right now. So the developers and publishers are stuck between a rock and a hard place - and we don't envy them, to say the least.