In 2004, EA paid a reported $300 million to sign an exclusive contract with the National Football League for rights to teams and players that extended until 2013. In 1993, EA re-titled the series as Madden NFL, after acquiring the rights to use official NFL teams and players. This new Madden transformed the industry, inspiring the developers to publish a fresh edition annually to generate ongoing profits for both EA and Sega. Although Nintendo controlled the console market at the time, EA began negotiations with Sega, Nintendo's Japanese competitor, whose Genesis system had the graphics, processing speed, and controls that made it ideal for a sports game. Game consoles were an entirely different domain from personal computers such as the Apple II. Although the gaming community considered the 1988 release a modest commercial success and EA felt that it had adequately established itself in the home computer market, the real victory came in 1990 when EA developed a second version, this time for the Sega Genesis. However, the Apple II did not possess the sophisticated memory and sound, pixel quality, or number of joystick ports for the game that Hawkins envisioned. EA released the first game, John Madden Football, for the Apple II home computer in 1988. Madden agreed to participate, but only if the gameplay was as realistic as possible, producing a huge technical challenge to include 22 on-screen athletes running real plays. Hawkins and Ybarra, interested in making such a game, wanted to apply Madden's expertise from both on and off the field.

In 1984, John Madden, former NFL coach and commentator, met with Trip Hawkins and Joe Ybarra, the founder of Electronic Arts (EA) and his right-hand-man,�to discuss the possibility of creating a football video game.

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