11-19-2009, 01:55 AM
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#63
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All Star
OVR: 51
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Austin, TX
Posts: 5,093
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Re: Xbox live activity November 09
I will say one thing, as a guy who has played games for over 30 years now, the quantity of quality games (think A+ titles) has greatly increased as have the consoles available. Used to be there was 1 console, then 2, and in 3. With the increase in the number of consoles and the number of people playing, there's been an increase in the number of games available for people to choose from. Games are like candy for me, and I buy a LOT of them, typically more than I have time to play (roughly 30 games sitting untouched right now in my stack of 'to play' games).
If the number of quality games affects anything, then IMHO it's going to affect the games that are released yearly. The question is, are ALL yearly games seeing a reduction in sales? I honestly can't answer that question. I know that NBA 2K10 killed it's numbers from last year with a 60% increase so far over the same time span. Can anyone else show numbers from other yearly releases?
If there is a trend that affects yearly releases of sports titles, then it should affect all yearly releases, not just Madden, which means the quality of the game has nothing to do with the reduction in sales numbers. However, if Madden stands virtually alone in the reduction of units sold, then that points strongly a customer rejection of the game.
They may reject it for quality issues, or due to the negative views held by gamers caused by the Madden / NFL Exclusivity deal. Whether rightly or wrongly, I'm not sure EA can ever recover with the customers who feel cheated out of future versions of 2K NFL games. There's a lot of gamers out there who view it as a mark of honor/integrity to not buy their games. How does a company convince a customer to ignore their own convictions? This is pure conjecture of course, but something has caused the sell numbers to go down, and I know whenever I talk with collegues or kids in their 20's they are all aware of the deal, and they almost never have anything good to say. Word of mouth can kill products and can even kill brands.
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