RaychelSnr's Blog
I initially wrote a blog post last week on Madden and NCAA sales but pulled it since I thought I might be breaking some copyright laws -- so I had to double check. I found myself to be in the clear, but decided to wait until today to repost this article, reworked and streamlined to eliminate any doubt so it can stay live.
So with that said, let's take a look at the best evidence we have and figure out where both Madden and NCAA are when it comes to sales.
NCAA Football
Depending on which data set you use, you will find that NCAA Football sales are somewhere in between 8% up over last years through the end of July or 8% below last years through the end of last week. That's quite the range in data. I've done some data analysis of my own via both sources and have found that NCAA sales are hovering around flat, starting off relatively strong but weakening as time has gone on.
Madden
Using just VGChartz as our barometer for Madden sales numbers wise, we see Madden sales are actually up 5% in the VGChartz numbers this year. However, XBox 360 sales are down and Playstation 3 sales are way up -- more on that later. Given the discounted price of admission for Madden, and the anticipated statistical deviance, it's definitely too early to say Madden has slipped in sales, but there are warning signs indicating that retailers have had to really push to get Madden off of store shelves compared to previous years.
Rising Console Base -- Falling or Flat Software Sales
Compared to this time last year, the base of console users has risen from 24 million users to 34 million users. However, software sales industrywide are down 30% from their peak!!! What this means is that people are buying and replacing consoles, but they aren't buying many titles. From a business perspective, when a yearly title's sales are hovering around flat when the base of users is rising, that's a bad sign and in a lot of ways, pretty much what falling sales would be like. For a yearly title to actually lose sales in this environment would be quite the failure.
Prognosticating Where Sales End Up
I'm far from THE authority to predict where sales end up with both titles considering the lack of reliable data on this side of the corporate rooms. However, it is important because sales are a referendum on the direction of the product. However, after doing a few days of analysis -- or rather parts of a few days in analysis, I'm not a total geek here people -- I think we will ultimately see sales which disappoint investors. Expect ERTS to get hammered a bit in the Sept/Oct timeframe. Given the very real possibility of more economic trouble into the fall, along with the continued secular shifts in the economy moving dollars away from gaming, I think we'll see Madden and NCAA sales ultimately end up lower than last year, perhaps by a sizeable margin (5-10%). I don't think the suits hit the panic button too quickly, but it'll be a bad thing for hardcore gamers if they do, trust me on that.
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.
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Outside of the heaviest hitters - like MW, WoW, and Halo... games will struggle to be what they once were. Sports games, being a yearly release, are in a particularly tough spot. Let's hope that doesn't mean companies tightening resources.
Hopefully a strained economy motivates the NFL to add to their income via multiple licenses...