Madden Sales Numbers

[Toupal]

Quote: Originally Posted by Valdarez

Years ago I ran the numbers on Madden sales over the years (see here), which were declining at the time. Just took a quick look and here's the numbers for recent years. Found the 2013 to be oddly higher for some reason. The only thing I could see that stood out was the PSVita sales (think this is the only year a Madden title was made for Vita). It also had the WiiU to help boost sales a bit, but sales were still up overall regardless of those one year platform sales boosts. Anything new introduced that year that drove sales or any insight into the bump in 2013 sales? NFL 5 7.59 NFL 6 8.44 NFL 7 9.17 NFL 8 8.1 NFL 9 7.9 NFL 10 7.53 NFL 11 5.86 NFL 12 5.48 NFL 13 6.2 NFL 14 5.15 NFL 15 5.83

I worked at an electronic store while in college back then, and I will tell you that the Wii U was huge for Madden 13 sales. It was the last time they sold Madden for a nintendo device and people were still buying it well past the 2012/2013 season.

[Skyboxer]

Quote: Originally Posted by Toupal

I worked at an electronic store while in college back then, and I will tell you that the Wii U was huge for Madden 13 sales. It was the last time they sold Madden for a nintendo device and people were still buying it well past the 2012/2013 season.

The data I see shows Madden WiiU has only sold roughly 130,000 globally since launch (Not including digital sales).
If the data is accurate.. who knows.

[bloobloouk]

Quote: Originally Posted by Valdarez

This is old, but discusses digital sales / Madden -- http://www.gamespot.com/articles/top.../1100-6425560/ Madden was #9 overall in digital sales back in February, so definitely moving units there. Anyone know a way we can get numbers without paying for a subscription somewhere?

If you dive into the source article you get an actual sales figure that we can use to make a fermi estimation for a bit of fun...

1. Madden 2015 sold 5.83m retail copies and an unknown quantity of digital
2. We will assume that a digital copy costs $50 to account for sales, discount codes etc
3. Madden 2015 had $6.1m digital revenue in January 2015 - SOURCE
4. In the first 10 weeks after launch of Madden 2015 on PS4 ~965,000 retail copies were sold ~55% of all retail copies sold to date, for fermi purposes we will assume this percentage occured on all platforms - SOURCE
5. If we assume that retail sales stabilised after 10 weeks and then sold at a constant rate for 6 months before ceasing completely you would have 7.5% of sales being made each month
6. If digital sales follow the same trajectory we can assume Madden 2015 produced total digital sales of (6 * $6.1m) + ($6.1m / 0.075) = ~$118m
7. We can therefore estimate that Madden 2015 sold in the region of 8.19m copies

NOTE: I don't think MUT transactions are included in the digital revenue figures for January 2015, despite small print saying it includes microtransactions. MUT makes significantly more than that each month according to EA financial reports.

I am not claiming this to be 100% accurate. I just saw this and thought it would be a fun math problem to have a go at solving!

EDIT: I have just checked the Super Data Research article again and they have specified that FIFA doesn't appear in the list as they have excluded its Ultimate Team transactions, and without those it would not be in the top 10. Therefore my assumption that MUT is not included in these figures is likely true.

EDIT2: The other thing to consider is the strong growth of pre-owned games, which obviously cannibalise the headline sales figures. Five years ago I bought most titles brand new, either at launch or later when they were discounted; now most of my purchases are pre-owned.

Ultimately if you take the figures and throw in the growth of pre-owned you end up concluding that Madden's actual player base is probably around the same mark as it was at it's 2007 high point, or maybe even a little bit higher. We'll never know for certain, but it is clear that Madden is NOT having a massive sales slump.

[BigDaddyHolmes]

Madden 13 was the yr the pysics engine released. That is why it sold. Scary thing is from the numbers going down in 14, users weren't impressed.


I still believe a great football game could sell 10 mill+ copies yearly

[Valdarez]

Quote: Originally Posted by bloobloouk

If you dive into the source article you get an actual sales figure that we can use to make a fermi estimation for a bit of fun... 1. Madden 2015 sold 5.83m retail copies and an unknown quantity of digital 2. We will assume that a digital copy costs $50 to account for sales, discount codes etc 3. Madden 2015 had $6.1m digital revenue in January 2015 - SOURCE 4. In the first 10 weeks after launch of Madden 2015 on PS4 ~965,000 retail copies were sold ~55% of all retail copies sold to date, for fermi purposes we will assume this percentage occured on all platforms - SOURCE 5. If we assume that retail sales stabilised after 10 weeks and then sold at a constant rate for 6 months before ceasing completely you would have 7.5% of sales being made each month 6. If digital sales follow the same trajectory we can assume Madden 2015 produced total digital sales of (6 * $6.1m) + ($6.1m / 0.075) = ~$118m 7. We can therefore estimate that Madden 2015 sold in the region of 8.19m copies NOTE: I don't think MUT transactions are included in the digital revenue figures for January 2015, despite small print saying it includes microtransactions. MUT makes significantly more than that each month according to EA financial reports. I am not claiming this to be 100% accurate. I just saw this and thought it would be a fun math problem to have a go at solving! EDIT: I have just checked the Super Data Research article again and they have specified that FIFA doesn't appear in the list as they have excluded its Ultimate Team transactions, and without those it would not be in the top 10. Therefore my assumption that MUT is not included in these figures is likely true. EDIT2: The other thing to consider is the strong growth of pre-owned games, which obviously cannibalise the headline sales figures. Five years ago I bought most titles brand new, either at launch or later when they were discounted; now most of my purchases are pre-owned. Ultimately if you take the figures and throw in the growth of pre-owned you end up concluding that Madden's actual player base is probably around the same mark as it was at it's 2007 high point, or maybe even a little bit higher. We'll never know for certain, but it is clear that Madden is NOT having a massive sales slump.

Solid approach, however I believe your analysis is just a tad off. Reread the source article for the $6.1 million again closely. They used the number of full game sales as an initial starting point. However the $6.1 includes additional content, with means MUT. (FIFA earned $28.3 million in the same month, 93% of which was microtransaction based. It's digital content alone is enough to make it #2) I think you were discounting MUT due to the disparity, but FIFA outsells Madden several times over in game units due to world wide distribution, and the Ultimate Team mode has been out there longer and does better than Madden's MUT.

Also might throw in the 63% / 37% split in digital sales since the numbers are reporting the higher percentage.

If Madden follows the same 93% trajectory (willing to bet it's lower than 93% though), then the $6.1 million becomes 0.42 million for unit sales, which is going to be more in line with what I would think full game digital sales would be for a sports game.

[bloobloouk]

Quote: Originally Posted by Valdarez

Solid approach, however I believe your analysis is just a tad off. Reread the source article for the $6.1 million again closely. They used the number of full game sales as an initial starting point. However the $6.1 includes additional content, with means MUT. (FIFA earned $28.3 million in the same month, 93% of which was microtransaction based. It's digital content alone is enough to make it #2) I think you were discounting MUT due to the disparity, but FIFA outsells Madden several times over, and the Ultimate Team mode has been out there longer and does better than Madden's MUT. Also might throw in the 63% / 37% split in digital sales since the numbers are reporting the higher percentage. If Madden follows the same 93% trajectory (willing to bet it's lower than 93% though), then the $6.1 million becomes 0.42 million for unit sales, which is going to be more in line with what I would think full game digital sales would be for a sports game.

I'm afraid I disagree. I believe the FIFA section was there to explain why such a high revenue game was excluded from the top ten - namely because it didn't qualify due to only raising $1.98m in game sales. It would be odd for them to exclude FIFA due to high microtransactions and not FIFA.

Can you explain your point re the 63%/37% split? The fact I used PS4 numbers doesn't matter as we aren't dealing with individual platform numbers. The %digital sales on each console will be roughly comparable, PS4 merely has a lead in overall digital sales due to it's larger install base.

[Valdarez]

Quote: Originally Posted by bloobloouk

I'm afraid I disagree. I believe the FIFA section was there to explain why such a high revenue game was excluded from the top ten - namely because it didn't qualify due to only raising $1.98m in game sales. It would be odd for them to exclude FIFA due to high microtransactions and not FIFA.

Seriously? If so, that's unfortunate, it was solid analysis otherwise.

Copied directly from one of the sources: https://www.superdataresearch.com/bl...console-games/

Quote:

We compiled this initial top 10 list by full game downloads in the United States, which is a starting point for several of our clients’ analyses. The table above then shows you the worldwide revenues for those titles, including both full game downloads and additional content.

That seems pretty clear to me.

Quote: Originally Posted by bloobloouk

Can you explain your point re the 63%/37% split? The fact I used PS4 numbers doesn't matter as we aren't dealing with individual platform numbers. The %digital sales on each console will be roughly comparable, PS4 merely has a lead in overall digital sales due to it's larger install base.

Ignore, that was my bad. Was thinking the $$$ was only for PS4, but it was all digital sales across all platforms.

[Valdarez]

Read this article: http://venturebeat.com/2014/09/12/ma...-august-debut/

Quote:

EA has previously noted that its new releases do between 10 and 15 percent digital sales on new consoles. Now, the Xbox One has the premium EA Access program. It costs $5 a month or $30 a year and gets subscribers a 10-percent discount on digital games from the company. Creutz is entertaining the possibility that the service pushed Madden to 20 percent digital.

The numbers you show are way over that right now.


Here's another article that said Madden's overall digital sales account for 29% of revenue. Again, that number is FAR lower than what you projected, and it's including MUT. -- https://www.superdataresearch.com/bl...digital-games/

If you go with the number I suggested above (using the 93% ratio), you'll get much closer to the 15 to 20% mark as reported by EA themselves.

Or we can be lazy and just add 15 to 20% to the overall number.