Well, they finally did it. Electronic Arts has integrated it’s popular Madden football video game franchise with a fantasy football league and information website. It makes a lot of sense, after all. When you have the wildly popular following that Madden has garnered, you have ready audience of fanatic football fans, and yes, likely fantasy football owners. It’s not too much of a leap to link the leagues, management systems seen on traditional fantasy football league sites with a virtual reality gaming experience. In essence, the integration by EA allows fantasy owners to draft and manage a team, then put that fantasy team through a season in the Madden ecosystem. Brilliant idea and quite logical, when you think about it.

But how does it look/feel? Let’s take a closer look.

XBOX 360™/PLAYSTATION®3
* Import your fantasy team into MADDEN NFL 09
* Manage League Drafts Through Your Xbox 360™ and PLAYSTATION®3
* Live Scoring On Your Xbox 360™ and PLAYSTATION®3
Website
* FREE Leagues and Teams plus Customizable Commissioner Scoring and Setup
* FREE Weekly Live Scoring
* Great EA SPORTS Prizes* including $25 off at eastore.com for league winners
* New and returning fantasy players will need to register a new account to play this year. You will be able to locate existing leagues and teams after registration

The above seem like the main features. I like how you can get free leagues, teams, and weekly live scoring. That is a competitive advantage right there. The Live Draft Tracker is great if you have offline draft parties and allows the draft to be completed with the interactive game system and easily uploaded, saving the Commissioner time. Another cool feature is the Live Score Tracker. Get updated scores and fantasy stats on Sunday without having to check on your computer or laptop constantly, because it updates automatically! You can continue the “fantasy” by taking your drafted team and competing online against other teams around the country.

I’ve got to give it up to EA for innovating and pushing the envelope in the area of fantasy sports. If anything, this is one more tool for the Madden enthusiast to manage his fantasy football fix, too.

See below for some screenshots of the live draft portions of the game: