Chris' Blog: Are Madden Sales Slipping?

[RaychelSnr]

Quote: Originally Posted by Tyrant8RDFL

I think there are other factors in declining Madden sales and other gamers overall, but I think this one in particular is the main killer. Pre owned games. Many are willing to wait to buy a pre owned copy of any title, and this right here is killing the gaming company. Now for stores that sell pre won games. There are making a killing. The profit margin is huge. Much larger than selling the title new. They have to find a way to slow this down. I dont think they can, but at this point you can get games used from stores like gamestop, and through sites like amazon, ebay, and craig's list. I believe if the sale of pre own games did not exist in major retailers. Then sales would be very high. Now there is only one franchise that does not get affected by this , and its Activision with the COD series. I guess your product has to be so insane that gamers can not wait for a pre owned copy.

I'm pretty sure that's the intent of making people pay to play online if you didn't own the original game. But you are right that used games are selling like hotcakes right now, but they don't exactly lead to monster profits. Ask Gamestop how record used game sales helped them miss earnings forecasts....they aren't as profitable as you'd believe

[wheelman990]

Madden wont change. They build one engine, and swap things in and out for the next 6 years until the next gen consoles come. That wont change regardless of sales. They make a killing spending nothing on developing the game per year...its ALL MARKETING

Honestly, I know what they do. They spend money for developers to come in the first year, build a engine, and then build mini programs to tweak, and change things in the future...like a template...

Then they just hire kid developers the following years to tweak and change things with the templates in place.

Thats my belief, and thats what I have personally saw. there really hasnt been any huge changes. Player models, shinny helmets, different camera angles throughtout the releases, and a few others have been it.

To me locomotion is just tweaking the cut and start speeds....not really anything huge, but EA makes it sound like a state of the art breakthrough technology feature...

[Dewie12]

The only hope I have for Madden is if EA either

1) makes the game for the PC

2) realizes it can appease sim gamers by giving us more options to customize the experience for ourselves.

The first option may be effected by sales but the second is simply EA making a decision to open up its game for the USER's to dictate their experience. EA is not very good at that.

[rooney8]

Madden11 sales are up 5%??????

___________Madden 11 ________ Madden10
360 _______ 554,617 __________ 584,845
PS3 _______ 459,688 __________ 374,429
Wii ________ 92,313 ___________ 99,094
Ps2 ________ 62,011 __________ 139,100
PSP ________ 42,212 ___________ 58,214
Total _____ 1,210,841 ________ 1,255,682

So I guess you just took the 360 and Ps3 numbers. The Ps3 numbers went up nearly the same as the Ps2 went down and every other platform dropped. Now those figures for M10 are two days of sales where as M11 is five so lets try and adjust them. M09 sold roughly 16% in days 3,4 and 5. So I have Madden 11 two days sales at 1,017,106 and Madden 10 1,210,841 and Madden09 1,406,364. So I have M11 sales are down 16%. The game industry is down 8% this year so Madden is doing worse then it should especially considering how hard retailers have been working to sell it.
These are my take on Maddens sales and I could well be wrong. However they have not gone up 5% unless you only count two paltforms which is silly since the Ps2 death will always boost sales of the PS3. My predication for Madden sales this year on all five platforms. 6.2m down from 6.8m last year and would be worse except for early price drops.

[maddenps2]

Quote: Originally Posted by wheelman990

Madden wont change. They build one engine, and swap things in and out for the next 6 years until the next gen consoles come. That wont change regardless of sales. They make a killing spending nothing on developing the game per year...its ALL MARKETING Honestly, I know what they do. They spend money for developers to come in the first year, build a engine, and then build mini programs to tweak, and change things in the future...like a template... Then they just hire kid developers the following years to tweak and change things with the templates in place. Thats my belief, and thats what I have personally saw. there really hasnt been any huge changes. Player models, shinny helmets, different camera angles throughtout the releases, and a few others have been it. To me locomotion is just tweaking the cut and start speeds....not really anything huge, but EA makes it sound like a state of the art breakthrough technology feature...

Agree with you for the most part.

[RaychelSnr]

Quote: Originally Posted by rooney8

Madden11 sales are up 5%?????? ___________Madden 11 ________ Madden10 360 _______ 554,617 __________ 584,845 PS3 _______ 459,688 __________ 374,429 Wii ________ 92,313 ___________ 99,094 Ps2 ________ 62,011 __________ 139,100 PSP ________ 42,212 ___________ 58,214 Total _____ 1,210,841 ________ 1,255,682 So I guess you just took the 360 and Ps3 numbers. The Ps3 numbers went up nearly the same as the Ps2 went down and every other platform dropped. Now those figures for M10 are two days of sales where as M11 is five so lets try and adjust them. M09 sold roughly 16% in days 3,4 and 5. So I have Madden 11 two days sales at 1,017,106 and Madden 10 1,210,841 and Madden09 1,406,364. So I have M11 sales are down 16%. The game industry is down 8% this year so Madden is doing worse then it should especially considering how hard retailers have been working to sell it. These are my take on Maddens sales and I could well be wrong. However they have not gone up 5% unless you only count two paltforms which is silly since the Ps2 death will always boost sales of the PS3. My predication for Madden sales this year on all five platforms. 6.2m down from 6.8m last year and would be worse except for early price drops.

For all intents and purposes, the only sales that matter for the game people at OS care about is the PS3/360 version. Wii sales do not effect development direction on those platforms, ditto with PSP, PS2, iPad, etc.

But yes, according to VGChartz sales are down overall on every platform, which will hurt EA's bottom line, but it won't effect the development on the larger consoles.

Also, some good points on the release time and whatnot. I'd say you'd need to weight your numbers to be more front heavy, because sales aren't proportional and evenly spaced for each day -- if anything they'll drop by a few percentage points over time. But even still, it's likely if you compare launch days and whatnot, Madden probably is down a bit. We'll know more when the new numbers come in. Good post though!

[RumbleCard]

The idea that casual gamers make up the large majority of Madden purchasers is a huge misconception. A casual gamer would be someone who say buys NHL11 because they heard it was good but had never really purchased a hockey game before.

Most Madden buyers have previously owned installments of the game. Hence the huge numbers and larger than life following. If it didn't have such a massive following it would produce goddy numbers year in and year out. Buyers want the experience...they want "sim"ulated football. It really comes down to execution. And that's really where Madden has fallen short.

[mrprice33]

So is this thread going to go 16 pages, too?

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