Don’t judge Brett Favre in Madden NFL 09 by his cover.

When the latest edition of the football video game franchise is released Tuesday, it will still feature the quarterback in his Green Bay Packers uniform — despite the fact Favre was traded to the New York Jets. But publisher Electronic Arts said it was releasing a downloadable update to make Favre a Jet in the game, as well as new cover art for anyone who wants it.

“We do not plan to reissue packaging but will offer a free downloadable cover in the coming days on easports.com featuring Brett Favre in a Jets uniform,” EA Sports said in a statement released Thursday. But the real problems with Madden are much more than superficial. Madden (and most sports games, for that matter) traditionally include menus where you can adjust the skill level of computer-controlled players. These settings are known as “sliders,” since you slide a button back and forth to raise or lower the skill.

But the developers of Madden apparently forgot or didn’t bother to include sliders for the computer characters in the new version, according to one reviewer who got an early copy of the game. On a discussion forum at OperationSports.com, a Madden designer jumped into the discussion and admitted that, yeah, EA really messed up.

It would be one thing if EA left out these features for a reason and presented some kind of argument that the game is better without them. But it sounds as though they just forgot.

Of course, it’s hard to argue with success. Three of the top 10 best-selling games of all time in the U.S. are Madden games, and recent ones at that (Madden ’07, ’06 and ’05), suggesting that the drop in quality has so far deterred only the hard-core.

But there can be long-term downsides to taking your customers for granted. Just ask Ford and General Motors.