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

[Isura]

The key is in the development team and project management (especially quality control!). EA is a huge name in gaming, it can't be hard for them to attract top level programmers. The problem is it seems the development team just isn't passionate enough about football. They should either hire less able programmers who are football fanatics, or hire many many football "consultants" to keep the game going in the right direction (sim). Ultimately it is the developers that make a game come to life, so solution 1 is ideal. I haven't kept a copy of Madden since 06. This year I returned my copy that came with the PS3 to get NCAA. At least the NCAA team seems to have a better understanding of what makes college football so amazing !

[Araxen]

Quote: Originally Posted by stoncold32

Sadly, I'm sure Black Friday sales bumped the Madden sales up tremendously from people buying blindly just because "it's Madden" These are the people who are indirectly hurtign the game more than anything.

Well I picked it up off Amazon on a Black Friday deal for $25 so EA isn't making too much of a profit from that. I would be surprised if Amazon made any profit off it. I had no intentions of picking up Madden this year but at that price it was hard to beat. I wanted to see my RTG Player from NCAA play in the NFL but I wasn't paying $60-40 for that experience.

[LiquorLogic]

Quote: Originally Posted by stoncold32

Sadly, I'm sure Black Friday sales bumped the Madden sales up tremendously from people buying blindly just because "it's Madden" These are the people who are indirectly hurtign the game more than anything.

That doesn't bump up profit margins, which is the bottom line.

[Skyboxer]

Quote: Originally Posted by stoncold32

Sadly, I'm sure Black Friday sales bumped the Madden sales up tremendously from people buying blindly just because "it's Madden" These are the people who are indirectly hurtign the game more than anything.

Those that blindly buy Madden purchased it way before black Friday... Most anyways.

[ac-greasy]

Quote: Originally Posted by Araxen

Well I picked it up off Amazon on a Black Friday deal for $25 so EA isn't making too much of a profit from that. I would be surprised if Amazon made any profit off it. I had no intentions of picking up Madden this year but at that price it was hard to beat. I wanted to see my RTG Player from NCAA play in the NFL but I wasn't paying $60-40 for that experience.

I rented Madden this year for $10 at Blockbuster and felt violated....very disappointing game. I'm pretty much done with the franchise in general. Yes I'll read the reviews next year and may even rent it it again, but an actual purchase? No chance. Not until it's overhauled in a big way. We're talking impolded and rebuilt form the ground up...even then it will take the 3-4 years to iron the bugs (based on their track record). It's very despressing when you think about the fact that we're probably 5 years away from a real, playable, legit NFL football video game. And that's only if they make the right decisions moving forward which is very unlikely to happen. Video game football used to be the primary focus of all my gaming...now it's an after thought and not even on my radar. Thanks EA.

[Blue Line]

lets hope that EA can turn it around or that someone else can come in and bring us a football title sometime soon. i really miss a great football gaming experience.

[dj101]

It's almost like we're close to, if not already approached, the 1-15 season for EA-Madden. Trying to patch the team with gimmicks/free agents has not worked. It's now time for a regime change, and to completely start rebuilding the franchise from the bottom up. The answer is in your own game, EA. You'd have already seen that/understood that, had you actually paid attention to Franchise Mode.

[Only1LT]

Quote: Originally Posted by Araxen

Well I picked it up off Amazon on a Black Friday deal for $25 so EA isn't making too much of a profit from that. I would be surprised if Amazon made any profit off it. I had no intentions of picking up Madden this year but at that price it was hard to beat. I wanted to see my RTG Player from NCAA play in the NFL but I wasn't paying $60-40 for that experience.

Why would you think that EA wouldn't make any money off of your purchase, just because you got it on sale? EA sold the game to Amazon already. What they do with it after that doesn't affect them. They cashed Amazon's check months ago.

Now if you don't care about sending EA a message, then that's fine, but if you do, then you just helped them, because by buying a copy of Madden, you just depleted inventory and pushed Amazon that much closer to ordering more, thus increasing EA's sales of Madden.

I'm not saying that I am for or against that position, but from your comment, you seemed to be thinking about how your purchase did or did not affect EA, so I was just giving you clarification on your misconception.