Madden's Current Gen Has Not Been a Success

[It Must Be The Shoes]

Quote: Originally Posted by coogrfan

It's not so much a case of "won't" as much as "can't". EA's deal with the NFL requires them to release a Madden title on the current gen systems every year. Failure to do so would result is EA facing some seriously stiff financial penalties.

"We HAVE TO release a game every year or we'll be in trouble with the NFL" seems a little too self serving. EA has figured out how to push 4-6M units per year at $60.00 per unit sold regardless of the quality of their product. That's a whole lot of money. EA is going to release a game every year whether their contractual obligations require them to or not.

[roadman]

Quote: Originally Posted by It Must Be The Shoes

"We HAVE TO release a game every year or we'll be in trouble with the NFL" seems a little too self serving. EA has figured out how to push 4-6M units per year at $60.00 per unit sold regardless of the quality of their product. That's a whole lot of money. EA is going to release a game every year whether their contractual obligations require them to or not.

The cost of the liscense figues into cost, overhead, salaries, R & D, adverting, marketing, cost of making the game, etc.... You just can't take 4-6M units per year times $60.00 and come up with "that's a whole lot of $. That whole lot of money has been greatly reduced after all the costs.

[SpeedyMikeWallace]

I'm sorry, but 5 million units sold @ $59.99 is nearly $300 million. I don't care what their costs are, they're making "a lot of $".

[roadman]

Quote: Originally Posted by SpeedyMikeWallace

I'm sorry, but 5 million units sold @ $59.99 is nearly $300 million. I don't care what their costs are, they're making "a lot of $".

You can't just dismiss cost and throw it away from the equation. That isn't the way business is run.

Then why is their stock so low on the market?

People have this impression that EA is making $ hand over fist, but according to their stock price, they aren't.

[SpeedyMikeWallace]

When you're making $300 million annually off of a single title, you can pretty much count costs as negligible in the grand scheme of it. There's no possible way those kinds of sales are netting the title anywhere near negative. Even if they give 15% to the retailers and paid everyone that worked on the game $300,000, they'd still be making the kind of money most studios would dream of making.

Madden's success alone isn't going to make much a difference for the ENTIRE company. EA is a massive company with multiple studios and subsidiaries working under the Electronic Arts "umbrella". Madden isn't even their biggest sports title, FIFA is.

[airboss75]

Quote: Originally Posted by Eski33

Nice blog but this whole topic has been beaten to death. You didn't mention anything new that has not been said or written in the past five years. From my standpoint and a longtime gamer (have played every rendition of Madden since its Apple II days) Madden isn't a failure. To gamers, yes, the game has not lived up to a certain level of expectation especially on consoles that are to have more power. From an economic standpoint, people are still buying Madden. If Madden is so bad, how is it making so much money? Simple -- There are people out there who find the game fun. I am on the fence. When the 360 / PS3 era came about, my expectations mirrored everyone else's. I couldn't wait to see what EA would do with more graphical power and with consoles having HDD as a norm, EA was sure to break out all the stops. Instead, what we got was a stripped down game that didn't have nearly the features the PS2 / XBox versions had. Since that time, the Madden series improved little by little each year. Madden 09 and 10 were great games with Madden 10 taking visual leaps over its predecessor. The problem with Madden is that there are people want it to fail that they spend every waking moment looking for bugs, glitches, issues, etc. and blogging, writing in forums and recording videos that go straight to YouTube for all to see. I understand why people do this. They want competition back which is a great thing. In looking at what the NCAA 11 team did, this has to push the ante for the Madden team because NCAA 11, although not perfect, is one of the best console football games to date. It is visually pleasing as well as the online dynasty has to be one of the best multi-player features ever (outside of BAP in NHL). To compare Madden to a game like Backbreaker is almost criminal. First, to say a developer with fewer resources created a revolutionary physics engine is a tad slanted. Keep in mind that the developer of Back Breaker developed the physics engine first THEN creaeted a football game as a way to show it off. They aren't a football game developer who created a great physics engine. Also, your blog makes it seem as if they created this physics engine in one development cycle which isn't the case. NatualMotion was working on that physics engine for years and it took almost as long to release BackBreaker. I have no issues with the physics engine that is currently utilized in Madden and NCAA. Only those that cannot get past the simple fact that these are games and they will never fully emulate reality will continue to be "unhappy" with the state of Madden and other games.

Couldn't agree more here. Especially with the bolded. Madden/NCAA are pretty solid in my opinion. A dash of good presentation and a little more depth within franchise and it'll be all the way good to go if ya ask me. Floats my boat right now though. Madden 10/11 (although I never have time) make me want to play more than one franchise game in a row. Now thats impressive!

I didn't have that urge from 06 up to 09.

[LiquorLogic]

Quote: Originally Posted by SpeedyMikeWallace

I'm sorry, but 5 million units sold @ $59.99 is nearly $300 million. I don't care what their costs are, they're making "a lot of $".

They(EA) paid the NFL nine figures in cash during this whole exclusive fiasco. You also have to account for development, marketing, and distribution costs. EA isn't making 59.99 off of every copy of Madden that they sell.

[SpeedyMikeWallace]

Quote: Originally Posted by LiquorLogic

They(EA) paid the NFL nine figures in cash during this whole exclusive fiasco. You also have to account for development, marketing, and distribution costs. EA isn't making 59.99 off of every copy of Madden that they sell.

I already had a post covering how their expenses are negligible in the face of that amount of money.

Even if the game required...:

- $30 million in development costs
- $1 million for cover art and cases
- $10 million in advertisements
- 15% to retailers
(all of which are probably astronomically high)

...EA would still bank well over $200 million. They are making A LOT of money.