But even still it's not them thinking only the Wii has to be this way. Plus it means the HD systems are just going to get the same old same old that everybody's been complaining about and seems to have forgotten they were complaining about, while EA feels the Wii is worth experimenting on. HD system costs prevent too much experimentation.

Well... I like the style they're going for.

Then again, the last football game I purchased was NFL Blitz 2000 on the N64.

Experimenting is great, but... this just takes it to the extreme.

And yeah, HD systems do cost too much in terms of development to really experiment, but let's be honest - even if the HD systems were as cheap to develop for as the Wii, something like this wouldn't have even left the consideration stage on those consoles.

Also because those fans are locked into the mindset that only graphics shooting for photo realism matter. Those bred complaints over Wind Waker's graphics, which didn't hurt that game.

100% agree with you on Wind Waker.  But I find that different than a sports franchise that prides itself on emulating real life football.  With games like Zelda, it works because Zelda has always had an art style, and altering that art style to match the tone of the game is a lot easier to get away with than altering a "realism" art style in a series where a sense of realism is expected rather than an arcade direction.  They're supposed to like like real people unlike many other types of games where somewhat of a fantasy effect is expected and works. 

But it's not as though the new art style isn't really away from realism. It looks more like a way to avert the uncanny valley for non-gamers.

LordTheNightKnight raises a good point about the Wii getting more experimentation due to the lower dev costs.

So the Wii has had 3 Maddens and 3 art styles.

The other consoles have had 3 or more Maddens and 1 art style.

I think the Wii is better off with the variety.

Completely disagree.  I find this to be just about as unrealistic as you can possibly get for Madden simply because nobody looks that outlandish in reality.

No, you can get a lot more unrealistic even for madden. And I didn't claim it was actually realistic, just not as much of a move away from realism as you think. It would have looked like the powerful pro series, for one thing. Or cell shaded.

True, cell shaded or powerful pro would be worse, but any moves away from realism in Madden are still just about equal terrible ideas for the franchise and make zero sense whatsoever.  And powerful pro probably started that way.  Madden was never intended to be viewed in that sense (and I hope that cell shaded or powerful pro styles are too far out there to ever be considered by EA in the series, but they may surprise us again next year).