The numbers that matter -- and what they can tell us about sports gaming. - RaychelSnr's Blog

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RaychelSnr's Blog

The numbers that matter -- and what they can tell us about sports gaming. Stuck

Posted on July 1, 2010 at 12:50 PM.

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I've always been a numbers guy, which is probably why I love sports so much. Numbers are meaningful because they rarely lie. You can cut through rhetoric and emotion and get at the root of the issue in a hurry with numbers.

When it comes to a company defining success with a game, the characteristics with this generation have been to 1)Sell Well and 2)Produce games which are received well critically. Most companies use Metacritic for #2 and have their own access to sales numbers for #1. So what I did is use Metacritic and the next-best thing to my own financial board for sales numbers, VGChartz. With the exception of The Show, I kept this simple and simply opted for the 360 versions of each game for head to head comparisons and for total numbers, as I feel that console represents the best possible case study on a budget (in time).

There are some obvious conclusions which I was able to come to within this study. First, game quality (as judged by critics across the internet) has been on the increase in our genre this entire generation. On anecdotal evidence alone, I'd agree with that assessment. Sales rose for four years before dropping off somewhat in the genre last year, although the final tally isn't in.

When you look at the sales numbers from the two major companies in our genre, EA Sports and 2K Sports, you see a couple of important tidbits. First off in EA's graph, you see the company's total sales have been on the increase this entire generation. Also, fans of NCAA basketball should take note as to just how small the sales were for that game, and just how little it being gone will affect the bottom line of the company.

As for 2K, sales peaked with the '09 titles and have fallen somewhat this year. You can also see that the two games which didn't produce much in the way of sales for the company -- NHL and College Hoops) were axed. Also, note that MLB 2K suffered a large drop in sales in with MLB 2K10, the final numbers aren't in yet for the game, but sales will definitely be down. That's not a good sign for the 2K Sports brand considering they needed sales to increase dramatically to pay for the exclusive MLB license.

Tomorrow, I'm going to look at the relationship between review scores and sales as well as revisit the competition nugget from the perspective of the numbers that matter. Look for a rather controversial blog tomorrow! In the meantime, what do you make of the graphs shown today, are games getting better over time? Was EA justified in dropping NCAA Basketball? Sound off!

Chris is the Executive Editor of Operation Sports and maintains this blog on the site. He is also a native Oklahoman and avid storm chaser. You can follow him on Twitter @ChrisSnr.

Comments

# 1 osubucksfan47 @ Jul 1

It kills me how CH 2K8 was practically 2k's best selling game and it got the axe

# 2 spankdatazz22 @ Jul 1

I think this generation has been a near-total farce as far as review scores go. There hasn't been any consistency from the "major" review sites like IGN, Gamespot, etc. So imo using Metacritic ratings as part of an equation is faulty. Your point about "game quality being on the increase this entire generation" - shouldn't that be a BASE expectation? Since many original next gen titles were so disappointing on their first iteration I think some people actually applaud when certain games aren't worse than the previous year's iteration. But it should be expected that a game is going to improve on a year to year basis. Personally I feel most sports games genres have improved significantly this generation with the exception of football, obviously. Football are essentially just getting at or near where they were years ago. But overall reviews don't reflect that.

# 3 stlstudios189 @ Jul 1

CH2k series was not their best seller the colors stack on top of each other to get the overall sales total. NBA 2k series is their best seller by far. NCAA basketball for EA was canceled because there was liteally NO increase after 2k canceled their College Hoops series which showed how small the audience really is.

# 4 cjhandley @ Jul 2

Acquiring an exclusive license, and then refusing to make use of that license should be easily construed as an antitrust violation. EA essentially reduced overall wealth: they destroyed the ability of other companies to create profit, while sacrificing their own profits. Therefore, their only motivation, assuming they aren't merely incompetent is attempting to illegally capture market share from 2K.

# 5 Game4fun @ Jul 4

If college basketball isn't selling, then get rid of it. That makes the most sense. I just started playing video games again and the biggest reasons I play now are due to the fact that I can play online against real people. So for me, I wouldnt be buying these games unless I can play online. I'm sure there are people that feel the same way as me, although we are in the minority.