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

[dcsoldier]

your numbers are off according to this....
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6164113.html

http://www.industrygamers.com/news/madden-sales-down-at-least-10-but-should-rebound-next-year-says-eedar/

so if 2010 was down 10% and lets say this year is down 18%.....thats 28% in two years......50% looks very realistic considering that sales have been declining since 06 when madden 07 came out

[RaychelSnr]

Quote: Originally Posted by dcsoldier

your numbers are off according to this.... http://www.gamespot.com/news/6164113.html http://www.industrygamers.com/news/madden-sales-down-at-least-10-but-should-rebound-next-year-says-eedar/ so if 2010 was down 10% and lets say this year is down 18%.....thats 28% in two years......50% looks very realistic considering that sales have been declining since 06 when madden 07 came out

Madden had a fantastic Christmas-season and actually ended up selling rather well after a slow start. This year seems to be opposite, the game started off selling really fast and sales have now ran into a brick wall. If you look that article was actually published in September quite early (as is November). Once you get through Christmas if you still have these headlines, look for trouble to brew in Paradise.

[mestevo]

Quote: Originally Posted by MMChrisS

Will those PS2 sales ever be replaced? With the current hardware base being higher than it was 4-5 years ago, you'd expect sales to follow at least at somewhat of the same pace, they haven't. So no, this is definitely a big deal no matter how you spin it, especially if total sales fall this year after both the PS3 and 360 saw big expansions in market base. A product expanding sales in a rapidly growing market makes sense, a product expanding in sales below where everyone else is expanding much faster doesn't make sense and is cause for alarm. Look at FIFA for example. In the last 3 years, it's sales have almost doubled on the major platforms while Madden's has grown with the PS3 platform (over double), but the sales have only edged up on the 360 in 3 years (08 - 10) when the 360's hardware base has continued to grow. Thus you see FIFA sales growing at nearly double the rate of Madden this generation. The PS3's hardware base has exploded, thus I don't think it's any surprise anyone's seeing growth on the PS3 FWIW. However it goes without saying that without any independent way to actually get raw game sales data, everyone's basically drawing conclusions from the same data and it's reliability isn't really all that well known.

360 + PS3 in the US combined dont equal the number of PS2s sold yet in the US, where exactly do you expect these sales numbers to be made up from? When considering the few million copies that have been sold so far, with another million or two likely to be sold before Madden 12, the hundred(s) of thousands of PS2 copies sold last year that were not this year are certainly one reason for this magical 18%. Also I note you come and defend your post here, what happened with your last one, when I pointed out that sales returned to normal, proving that it was just week 1 sales to draw people into their stores to pick up Madden 11 rather than a competitors?

Quote: Originally Posted by MMChrisS

From a market share standpoint on the simulation game people worry about here on OS, it's definitely correct except it's not quite 50% like I originally recalled. However, the drop is best guess estimate between 30 - 40% or so considering the top platforms peaked at 6.5 million-ish and the current top simulation platforms are now selling less than five a year on their best year (before that is was less than 4). You could also make the argument that sales are down on a platform by platform basis by as much as 50% or more, if you want to directly compare PlayStation platforms, which I think might be a little silly since people have moved allegiances quite a bit this generation. It should go without saying that using VGChartz data is hazardous to ones health (and credibility). It's hard to find real raw data though, so it's the best most people have.

It's clear that there isn't a more dominant platform than the PS2 in the last decade, as a result comparing PS2 -> PS3 and expecting things to just work out and using that as your premise that things are less than satisfactory is flawed. Could things be better? Always. For your FIFA example... i'd point in part to improvement to a good game, but also the fact that we're not that far removed from a World Cup either.

Quote: Originally Posted by dcsoldier

first i would like to know where those numbers came from...second take a look at ps2 in 06 sales and compare them to ps3 in 10.....also those numbers include 3 additional platforms.......not an accurate comparison to say the least.

Because there is no accurate comparison, but there were almost a million PS2 sales in 2009. Those sales aren't being replaced as quickly as that platform died, this is one reason there are 'losses' for Madden as a title.

Quote: Originally Posted by dcsoldier

your numbers are off according to this.... http://www.gamespot.com/news/6164113.html http://www.industrygamers.com/news/m...ar-says-eedar/ so if 2010 was down 10% and lets say this year is down 18%.....thats 28% in two years......50% looks very realistic considering that sales have been declining since 06 when madden 07 came out

Percentages dont work like that, and please point out where the numbers are wrong by the way... at a glance it looks like those are year end figures, or do you think that nothing was sold from the end of the year and the 9 months following it prior to the next Madden's release?

News of Madden's demise is greatly exaggerated, I maintain that there is more flashy headline than substance. Down 18% in 13 weeks including sales from a dead console the year previous. Without knowing how much the PS2 sales make up for the lag in sales the figure is 100% meaningless. Argue the rest of the post all you want, it's that bold sentence that matters.

[RaychelSnr]

Quote: Originally Posted by MMChrisS

Madden had a fantastic Christmas-season and actually ended up selling rather well after a slow start. This year seems to be opposite, the game started off selling really fast and sales have now ran into a brick wall. If you look that article was actually published in September quite early (as is November). Once you get through Christmas if you still have these headlines, look for trouble to brew in Paradise.

Always trying to be upfront here: got some clarifications back from people that matter and made a few changes to the original article (at 2:00 am no less). You can read them, the news isn't all that good still considering we saw the exact opposite happen last year....wouldn't surprise me to see a Price drop and/or a marketing blitz heading into Christmas.

Now to see if my insomnia will go away.

[grunt]

This is a slow death of sport gaming in an age of FPS. The cost of licenses, exclusive licenses and annual releases are giving gamers the blahs. If EA had to do the exclusive licenses over again EA wouldn't have done it. EA would have invested in a Call of Duty (no license fees) type of franchise with tons of DLC.

EA's cash cow Madden is dying. Even the supporters of the game aren't excited about the game. I didn't buy Madden for the first time in over a decade. Madden went from the standing lines at mid night, to picking the game up at a big box on the 1st day, to gamefly and now I don't care anymore. I even stopped posting in the Madden forums and mostly read posts about the game. My Madden money went to NBA 2k11.

I don't trust the developers to make a balance game. EA doesn't have the resources to invest in developing a quality game. The excuses for not touching franchise was not only a joke but was embarrassing for a gaming company. The money spent on the NFL license and marketing drained the resources away from development.

Maybe this is a wake up call but some of us predicted this hot mess as soon as we saw the burger king pics before next gen. We were calling foul with building the game from the ground up. When they talked about the stadiums and very little about game play. Some of us called the decline of Madden the first night of the news of the NFL exclusive license. We were called fanboys and bitter but we knew without competition the game quality would deteriorate.

The sad thing is we still supported this game. Buying Madden 09 and the glimmer of hope in Madden 10. If we look at the 5 year cycle Madden came out with one quality game and all others were sub par. Now we all know Madden for this generation will never reach our expectations. As the song goes, "if you think you lonely now, wait until tonight girl". If they think Madden 11 sales took a hit wait until Madden 12. In the age of youtube and internet there are few places to hide.

Does signing up again for an NFL exclusive license make business sense for EA? The NFL might have to rethink their license strategies.

[blklightning]

makes perfect sense; the game is still bargain bin at this point. so i'm glad to see the sales reflecting the poor quality of the product.

[mestevo]

Quote: Originally Posted by grunt

EA's cash cow Madden is dying.

This is probably the furthest from the truth. Madden sales are probably close to flat if anything on the current consoles, combined with DLC and whatnot they are almost certainly getting more per purchased copy than ever before.

Meanwhile there were reports like these that were conveniently skipped over...

http://news.softpedia.com/news/NPD-S...t-155922.shtml

http://gamertvnetwork.com/index.php/...t/article/1135

http://www.gameseyeview.com/2010/09/...-august-sales/

http://www.gamepro.com/article/news/...bies-dominate/

Relative to other games in the lame new NPD reports Madden is where it was expected, but don't let that get in the way of pointing out the 1 liner of negativity out of context with no real data so it can actually be understood from this month's NPD.

People will see the flashy headline and assume the above though, that's for sure. Criticize people for using vgchartz, but then putting stuff like this out there, in addition to linking to the pretty much debunked previous article, what's that about credibility?

[RaychelSnr]

Quote: Originally Posted by mestevo

360 + PS3 in the US combined dont equal the number of PS2s sold yet in the US, where exactly do you expect these sales numbers to be made up from? When considering the few million copies that have been sold so far, with another million or two likely to be sold before Madden 12, the hundred(s) of thousands of PS2 copies sold last year that were not this year are certainly one reason for this magical 18%. Also I note you come and defend your post here, what happened with your last one, when I pointed out that sales returned to normal, proving that it was just week 1 sales to draw people into their stores to pick up Madden 11 rather than a competitors?

This 18% drop was a 12% surge in total sales just 3 short months ago using the same data. That's a huge turnaround in such a short time in terms of sales trends. The game was red hot and is now ice cold, that's not a recipe for success during the all-important Holiday season. As far as your last point, I have no idea what you are trying to say

Quote:

It's clear that there isn't a more dominant platform than the PS2 in the last decade, as a result comparing PS2 -> PS3 and expecting things to just work out and using that as your premise that things are less than satisfactory is flawed. Could things be better? Always. For your FIFA example... i'd point in part to improvement to a good game, but also the fact that we're not that far removed from a World Cup either.

Yes, the PS2 had a large volume of sales, but don't discount hardware replacement and late arrivals to the scene either. In terms of North American actual installed userbases, the number was a good bit smaller than 50 million during the boom years of Madden (and if you try to bring in Japanese and European hardware totals I'll ask you to go find more than 10,000 people total playing Madden in those countries).

FIFA is just one example of great sales growth due to quality. You can also look at NHL for an example. NBA 2K also saw good growth overall, but not as dramatic as NHL or FIFA.

Quote:

Because there is no accurate comparison, but there were almost a million PS2 sales in 2009. Those sales aren't being replaced as quickly as that platform died, this is one reason there are 'losses' for Madden as a title.

Again, Madden started off very quickly and was actually above last years pace even including the PS2 and as the game has spent time on the shelf and it is now alarmingly behind last year's pace. Of course, this is a trend that has to hold for it to become a problem since November and December are much bigger months for Madden than October is historically. However, you can't have your cake and eat it too (in reference to your newest post). If you want to use Madden's strong sales out of the gate this year to support your thesis, then you have to dump the PS2 argument from the equation, although it has to be dumped anyways due to simple mathematics.

Quote:

Without knowing how much the PS2 sales make up for the lag in sales the figure is 100% meaningless.

Considering they made up around 10% of last year's total sales on all platforms and so far about 6% of this year's sales, I'd have to say they can't mathematically be responsible for all of an 18% drop...but definitely a piece

Quote:

Percentages dont work like that, and please point out where the numbers are wrong by the way... at a glance it looks like those are year end figures, or do you think that nothing was sold from the end of the year and the 9 months following it prior to the next Madden's release?

As total volume of sales, over 90% of Madden's sales occur from August to December, so anything from late December onwards is perfectly reasonable if you want to reference it, just as an FYI to anyone digging for sales data -- you can just use NPD though since that's what they all reference