Madden Sales Down 18% Y-o-Y in October

[Only1LT]

Quote: Originally Posted by roadman

I'll go back to last week, deju vu? Now, back to the real stuff. I want to ask LT and TLC a question. With competition, can we all agree that the process to become a better product is enhanced without knowing the outcome? That's not guaranteeing anything about being a better product. We don't know that until the final results are in. Let's put my profession out there. If I'm a headhunter in a 6 person office, and there is a contest for a trip to Hawaii for the most placed people for the month of December. I'm in second place with one week to go. I have less calls, less contacts and one less placed person than the #1 person. If I want to win this trip, I need to make more calls and more contacts and place at least one more person. I need to get in the office earlier and stay later for this to occur. I enhance my workload by arriving early and staying late to have a chance of beating out the #1 person. I don't know if I will win the contest, but I'm giving it everything I have.

I can't agree with the first bolded part, because I'm not a mind reader. You would either be asking me to read the devs and the suits minds and know that they are thinking, "I'm not putting any effort into this game because there is no comp and I don't have to." Either that or you would be asking me to guess whether the games current state is because of lack of motivation, or lack of talent. I don't know how I could do that, and I don't know how anyone else can either. And if I did, I would just be perpetrating the same fallacy of causation as many of the posters are.

I do know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there are games, that I would consider to be terrible, that are produced, all while having competition, so there is no other logical thought process to make, other than that competition does not guarantee that Madden will all of sudden be great, just because it has comp.

As for the last bolded part of your post, you are making my point for me. You could make 10 times the phone calls as the person in front. You could stay late every night while he or she leaves at 2:00pm, and you still are not guaranteed to win the contest, even if you had been trying from the very beginning. In essence, the contest didn't do anything but make you motivated to work harder. It didn't guarantee you a positive result, ie actually winning the contest, in the slightest. Maybe comp will make EA/Tiburon "give it all they have", but if all they have ain't good enough, then what? You can guess that they do have what it takes, but that's just a guess.

I'm sorry you're feeling deja vu, but I have said that I would drop it with you lol.

[tlc12576]

Quote: Originally Posted by roadman

I'll go back to last week, deju vu? Now, back to the real stuff. I want to ask LT and TLC a question. With competition, can we all agree that the process to become a better product is enhanced without knowing the outcome? That's not guaranteeing anything about being a better product. We don't know that until the final results are in. Let's put my profession out there. If I'm a headhunter in a 6 person office, and there is a contest for a trip to Hawaii for the most placed people for the month of December. I'm in second place with one week to go. I have less calls, less contacts and one less placed person than the #1 person. If I want to win this trip, I need to make more calls and more contacts and place at least one more person. I need to get in the office earlier and stay later for this to occur. I enhance my workload by arriving early and staying late to have a chance of beating out the #1 person. I don't know if I will win the contest, but I'm giving it everything I have.

No. That is speculative, like LT was saying. Nobody knows what effect competition might have on the process for making Madden. It could somehow cause EA to decide to stop making the game all together and that wouldn't be enhancing it. What we all should agree on is that competition = choice, not improvement. Improvement is a possiblity with competition or without competition but so is regression, cancellation, innovation or stagnation, for the MaddenNation! (Sorry, I had a Jesse Jackson moment, LOL).

[ryan36]

Quote: Originally Posted by Only1LT

If you put a gun to my head and "force" me to recite the Gettysburg Address, word for word, I will do it, if I know it (provided I don't forget it from being literally under the gun lol). If I don't, I won't. The gun being aimed at my head or not, isn't going to make me magically know the Address, if I don't already.

Pics or it didn't happen

[Only1LT]

Quote: Originally Posted by ryan36

Pics or it didn't happen

Lol, sorry, but after I recited the Address, he stole my iPhone. He had a gun you know lol?

[Rashad19]

Quote: Originally Posted by tlc12576

No. That is speculative, like LT was saying. Nobody knows what effect competition might have on the process for making Madden. It could somehow cause EA to decide to stop making the game all together and that wouldn't be enhancing it. What we all should agree on is that competition = choice, not improvement. Improvement is a possiblity with competition or without competition but so is regression, cancellation, innovation or stagnation, for the MaddenNation! (Sorry, I had a Jesse Jackson moment, LOL).

TLC...your post literally had me cracking up at my desk! That Jesse Jackson moment was classic.

[tlc12576]

Quote: Originally Posted by kjcheezhead

You're missing my point. Tiburon doesn't have to change a thing. It doesn't matter how capable they are. If someone else makes an NFL game, either it's better than madden or it isn't. If it isn't, Madden is suddenly looks a lot more appealing than it has been to its customers because they see what the competition offers. Madden just got better without changing a thing, simply because customers see even worse alternatives. Without competition, consumers will never be satisfied with what Madden offers because they will always believe the game could be better than what they are getting. Whether or not that really is the case.

You are assuming that people are not happy with Madden because we dont have a current NFL game to compare it to. So, you think, if we did get one and it was inferior, Madden would be a better game by comparision. I guess you are trying to make a philosophical point but I disagree with this.

Madden is allegedly a NFL football simulation game, that should be compared with NFL football. I didn't prefer NFL 2k5 because it was better than Madden, I liked how it simulated NFL football. When I say that NFL 2k5 was a better game IMO, Im saying better at simulating NFL football. Even more to the point, being better than Madden, NFL 2k5 or any other game at NFL football simulation is not the benchmark. Coming as close to simulating the real NFL as possible in a video game is. The accolades for any NFL video game come from the areas where the game best simulates the real NFL.

Having another NFL video game inferior to Madden does NOT make Madden a better game. It just makes Madden better than that game and who gives a f**k about that? LOL

[KensaiKatai]

Bottom line is, if what happened to Elite was largely in part due to what NBA2k11 brought to the table..it's only a given what would happen if Madden was faced with the same predicament in having stiffer competition nicking at it's heels. They would be forced to go back to the drawing board. This isn't the case right now and it won't be as long as there is an exclusive license. What is going on with 2k and it's baseball franchise is also indicative of this and that is because of what the Show brings to the table. You give the consumer choices...well, competition breeds excellence.

The disparity and what we expect as consumers right now has very little bearing because there is all types of wiggle room for Madden as long as there is no competition. I enjoy this years product but in many ways it feels broad and manipulative in it's approach. There as a lot of fundamental weaknesses in basic presentation aspects as well as sim offerings that we've come to expect from other titles such as the show and 2k. In some regards, I don't think it's arrogance as much as ignorance as far as programming, maybe a little bit of both. If this continues to be the case then sales will continue to suffer and it won't bode well for us that are trying to maintain an objective approach as to what we expect in a football video game.

[roadman]

I'm sticking with the way I felt for most of my life. I'm also basing this on personal and business experiences.

I still feel, generally speaking, that competition is a good thing to make a product better. I'm not saying it's a guarantee or a given, but overall, competition, in most cases, can't hurt.