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Old 11-18-2009, 05:35 PM   #37
Only1LT
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Re: Xbox live activity November 09

Quote:
Originally Posted by Brando70
The red flag will be raised when the sales decline considerably, which they haven't. Madden has lost market share but it's still a huge seller and the biggest sports game by far. Even if gamers have left M10 faster this year, that could also be because it's been a particularly active fall in terms of releases. The presence of the M10 demo could also mean some gamers have a new interest in the game.

The other thing is this list represents a relative ranking of games, not absolute numbers. It's quite possible Madden's in the top 15 but has more people playing it than last year, given the increase in the 360 console base. However, that's just speculation because there's nothing here to tell us what's going on.

The only thing you can deduce from this is that nine other games and the Madden 10 demo are more popular online than the full version of Madden 10. There are simply too many data points missing to make much of a conclusion beyond that.
You make valid points and, yes, there are data points missing from this list. This list doesn't give the whole picture. I don't think that it should be discounted though, because I do tend to think that there is a connection here, but a case can not be made, definitively, at this juncture.

However, you brought up a point, in an attempt to try to try and explain how Madden may still be in good shape, when that very same point can be used to say that Madden may in fact, be in worse shape than ever. You mentioned that the install base of the 360 (and all consoles in general) has increased from last year. Which is obviously and unquestionably true. You said that this could cause a saturation on Live, whereas Madden may actually have more people playing it this year and have it not be in the top 10 because there are just so many other FPS gamers on the scene. Possible. But, when you take into account all of the new consoles, it makes the fact that Madden’s sales have declined, yet again, look even worse.

You can’t tell me that out of all of the millions of systems that have been sold, that none of them are Football gamers, or that all of them are Madden haters. There have to be some people from that pool that has the potential to like Football games or that are Football gamers already, and were just waiting for the prices of the current gen systems to drop. Yes the current gen sales of Madden are supposedly up 3%, but I don’t find it all that curious that EA has not touted sales of the other platforms, considering that they are down. Other platforms, mind you, have increased their user bases as well.

Whether the game is great or terrible, isn’t the issue, and you can surely discount these Live top 10 stats as not being relevant, but I think that people are kidding themselves if they think that Madden is just fine, from a business standpoint. Yes it still sells 3 or 4 million copies, but it also costs appreciably more to make when you factor in the exclusive rights fees, and the massive amount of marketing that is done for this game. Taking that into consideration, I think it’s reasonable to assume that even if this game was selling at the pre exclusive deal numbers, which it is not, it still might not be on solid footing
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