David Ortiz, lead producer of the Madden football series for PS3 and Xbox 360, has left EA Tiburon, the Orlando-based company which has developed the series since 1994. Ortiz claimed he was leaving for family reasons but 1UP reports that he was frustrated with the company. So where does that leave the series?

Many have accused EA of being lazy with Madden ever since they entered into an exclusivity agreement with the NFL, making it impossible for anyone else to make a game depicting real NFL players or teams. Critics of the series argue that each year's installment is merely a marginal upgrade over the previous years, with updated rosters and maybe a new feature or two.

Still, I think they were moving in the right direction with 2008, which smoothed out weaknesses of the previous games (the sloppy AI and anemic Superstar Mode) and added an interesting "weapons" feature which differentiated individual players by the way they played their position (for example, does a cornerback jam receivers at the line of scrimmage or does he specialize in deep coverage?) and not just by their physical attributes.

The Madden series seems to be in a state of flux since it debuted on the next-gen consoles in 2006. I think the process of moving a franchise to a new console causes a developer to reevaluate the series (the series made a huge leap when it first landed on PS2 with Madden 2001, for example). They even phased out John Madden himself in the past couple years; he and Al Michaels no longer provide play-by-play commentary. If it's true Ortiz left because of frustration with the company, it could mean that he wasn't happy with the direction the series was taking, or that he felt the series wasn't changing quickly enough. Or this is all the result of office politics completely unrelated to the game. You can't draw any definitive conclusions from what's been revealed.

EA Tiburon producer Phil Frazier will take over Ortiz's role on the series. The thing is, no matter what they do (or don't do) with Madden 2009, hordes of people are going to be lining up outside stores at midnight in mid-August to buy it. Here's to hoping that devotion is rewarded with the next installment.