Madden Football returns for a fifteenth season. Bloomberg Boot Camp, a report on today's technology. It's the bestselling sports video game in history. The Madden Football video game franchise….which chalked up sales of five million games last year….and 37 million since its inception…is back…and expecting to be bigger than ever. Electronic Arts senior product manager Jordan Edelstein…says the EA has finally reached an agreement with Microsoft…that allows the game to be playable online on the Xbox console…

"We're thrilled to be on Xbox Live, last year we were on Playstation 2 and we had hundreds of thousands of players. We were finally able to add Xbox Live this year. There are people on already playing and we expect that number to grow tremendously over the next few weeks."

The list of fans include NFL players. Roster changes are reason enough for many to shell out fifty dollars for the latest version year after year. But, EA, says there are other reasons as well…

"This year we've added what we call story line central…where players' morale and the stories around your team, impact your team. So if you don't throw the ball to your star wide receiver, he'll complain, his morale will drop, and your team chemistry will suffer."

There is competition from other football video games….NFL Fever from Microsoft and NFL GameDay from 989 Sports…and others….but Madden remains the one to beat. You can find us on the Web, with an archive of reports, at Boot Camp.com. Bloomberg Boot Camp, I'm Fred Fishkin