EA Sports - A Tale of Two Tribal Strategies

[mjussawalla]

Quote: Originally Posted by yanks26ngoin

Your darn right. Its called the licensing contract came to an end after the 2005 installment. Then 2k bought the exclusive rights. MVP made alot of money particularly 2005.

Sorry, I meant the MVP NCAA Baseball series.

[Bwnarrow3]

Interesting. EA is using a different approach to raise sales, while Madden is using the obvious approach by giving the hardcore gamers what they want.

Good post.

[Bwnarrow3]

Quote: Originally Posted by yanks26ngoin

I do feel that Madden may give a more realistic football experiance than NCAA. But, what do you expect with a franchise that makes aton of money, and that only has to worry about 32 teams and their stadiums and rosters while NCAA has 119 teams, stadiums and rosters to worry about. Madden has alot more diskspace than NCAA, so they were able to add alot of the new onfield enhancements.

Yes. I believe this is a key factor to why Madden is so far ahead of NCAA. NCAA's rosters are harder to update each year because 1. 25% of the team is leaving (Seniors/Pro) and 25% is coming in (Freshmen). These are updated every year for NCAA while Madden doesn't have nearly as much roster updating to do as NCAA. And 2. The obvious one is 32 teams to 120 teams.

[Bigdmo9999]

Great article. I'm really hoping sales drop majorly for the NCAA team this year, hopefully it'll actually get their attention.

[Bwnarrow3]

Quote: Originally Posted by Bigdmo9999

Great article. I'm really hoping sales drop majorly for the NCAA team this year, hopefully it'll actually get their attention.

Me too because then they might realize (if they keep their liscense for the next year) to take after Madden and give the community (the main consumers) what they want!

[Bigdmo9999]

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who would love an NCAA version of Madden.

[JuiceIsLoose]

I imagine this has a lot to do with Madden being the more established franchise in terms of popularity. It seems like the NCAA series is trying to cater to as many people as possible in an attempt to become more established. Madden is so firmly entrenched that I think they don't feel as much pressure to drive sales, and thus they can focus more on creating a great game. I think a good analogy is how Blizzard makes games that are designed to be for elite competition, but they can afford to do this since they have such a pedigree and following that they know they're going to sell copies.

[rudyjuly2]

Good blog.

I wonder how much Teambuilder will boost sales for NCAA. Some people eat that stuff up. I do think building a realistic game will be good for everyone - casual and hardcore. The casual fan wants the game to look like the real thing - they just need to play on the easier difficulty levels to avoid frustration.