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

[Vikes1]

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

i agree, i don't really think people hate madden that much its just that madden hasn't made long enough strides to please the hardcore madden fans. madden has been around for over 20 years and most of the madden fans have grew up playing madden and are now grown adults...and grown adults won't keep paying $65 for a couple of upgrades every year. IMO the madden consumer has become more responsible and aware of the business aspect that falls into game making and game sales. fool me once, shame on you...fool me twice, shame on me.....fool me every year, shame on both of us.

Very well said Blue.

As an older gamer myself, ya...I realize Madden is just a video game. But also as an older gamer, my needs from sport video games has evolved through the years. Where now, I need the games to be as believable as possible. Where the game modes function as advertised, and the focus is on solid, again believable game play and deep functioning franchise modes.

No...I don't hate Madden. But I'm now spending my money on the few video sports games I do buy, on other games than Madden. Games that imo, provide me with the things I'm looking for. I think there may be a growing number of gamers, including some of the older guys, starting to realize there are other sports games out there that are just more satisfying than what Madden has to offer.

[steelcurtain311]

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

I was met with the usual disappointment upon playing Madden this year. Especially since I was playing the Show up until I bought Madden. Then after that, I bought NBA2K. So before and after Madden, I was given glimpses of what sports gaming can be. That made Madden all the more worse.

I've fully given up on the game at this point, I won't buy it again until it's significantly changed. Until they get spacing/contact issues right. I feel almost insulted at this point when I throw 40 yards downfield to have a MLB swat the ball. Or when I have a perfectly open receiver, but by the time the ball gets to him, it's thrown behind and the DB floats 5 yards across the field and swats it away. It simply does not represent football in any way, and there's no real reason as to why it shouldn't.

[Knapper]

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

For the first time ever I traded in my Madden game before the next one was released. Usually I play it Madden all year long and end up doing multiple franchises. This year I just could not get into the game at all. I never even completed a single season in franchise mode. I tried all sorts of sliders and such but never really found what I was looking for.

There is a few glaring issues that really bugged me. One of the worst is a visual issue when the QB back peddles when I rolling out to his non-throwing side it did not even look like he was touching the ground and forget the physics of it. It looked ridiculous especially on a replay. And of course defense was questionable even with patches and sliders.

One final issue that I have felt over the past few years is there is little to no difference between which teams/players I use. No players feel unique. I can pretty much pick any two teams and overall it feels like playing with any other two teams. Sure the playbooks are more different this year than previous years but still running with Peyton Hillis did not seem any different than running with Joseph Addai or really any other RB in the league.

Ultimately I was trying to force myself to play rather than wanting to play. So I popped in my old game Xbox game from that other developer and while it may not be up to par graphically and some other areas are outdated, it certainly felt like a much better game of football. That was the deciding factor and I took my Madden into Game Stop yesterday. At this point I do not see myself buying Madden 12 and this is the first time I have even considered not buying Madden on release day since I first started playing it way back on the Genesis in 1992.

Even though I always bought Madden, I miss the days of having 3 or 4 NLF games come out each year so I could find the one I liked best each year. Remember way back when there was Madden, NFL 2k, NFL Gameday, NFL Fever, and NFL Quarterback Club. Although really Fever and QB Club were usually not very good at least we had options and it made each of the companies put in more effort each year to grab up as much market share as possible.

[CuseGirl]

Eh, I just stopped buying Madden because it couldn't count stats properly and I hated the draft. The scouting was broken, and if I found a "diamond in the rough" (like a 95 rated guy in the 6th round), he would ask for 1st round money, knowing he was a 6th rounder. Total BS. Also, I got sick of handling contracts. Love NCAA, you recruit them, they play, they leave, you recruit more.

[SA1NT401]

Get rid of Pete Moore and is stupid logic and ZERO knowledge of sports gaming and positive changes and additions will follow. This is NO surprise to me.....Hope the trend continues.

[Skyboxer]

How can you say "That's incredibly bad news."
IMO it's great news for FB gaming fans. At least from one who's been less than impressed with how the franchise has been developed.
Yes Madden has made a couple good steps the last couple years BUT IMO that isn't too hard to do if you look at where Madden was.

Even in the past couple years I still see no signs of real AI. Until there's competition to make multiple developers not take the $ for granted, we'll continue to see games behind where they could be.

My .02

[Only1LT]

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

How can you say "That's incredibly bad news."
IMO it's great news for FB gaming fans. At least from one who's been less than impressed with how the franchise has been developed.
Yes Madden has made a couple good steps the last couple years BUT IMO that isn't too hard to do if you look at where Madden was.

Even in the past couple years I still see no signs of real AI. Until there's competition to make multiple developers not take the $ for granted, we'll continue to see games behind where they could be.

My .02

On this point, your $.02 are worth their weight in gold lol.

[Isura]

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

The key is in the development team and project management (especially quality control!). EA is a huge name in gaming, it can't be hard for them to attract top level programmers. The problem is it seems the development team just isn't passionate enough about football. They should either hire less able programmers who are football fanatics, or hire many many football "consultants" to keep the game going in the right direction (sim). Ultimately it is the developers that make a game come to life, so solution 1 is ideal. I haven't kept a copy of Madden since 06. This year I returned my copy that came with the PS3 to get NCAA. At least the NCAA team seems to have a better understanding of what makes college football so amazing !

[Araxen]

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

Sadly, I'm sure Black Friday sales bumped the Madden sales up tremendously from people buying blindly just because "it's Madden"

These are the people who are indirectly hurtign the game more than anything.

Well I picked it up off Amazon on a Black Friday deal for $25 so EA isn't making too much of a profit from that. I would be surprised if Amazon made any profit off it. I had no intentions of picking up Madden this year but at that price it was hard to beat. I wanted to see my RTG Player from NCAA play in the NFL but I wasn't paying $60-40 for that experience.

[LiquorLogic]

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

Sadly, I'm sure Black Friday sales bumped the Madden sales up tremendously from people buying blindly just because "it's Madden"

These are the people who are indirectly hurtign the game more than anything.

That doesn't bump up profit margins, which is the bottom line.

[Skyboxer]

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

Sadly, I'm sure Black Friday sales bumped the Madden sales up tremendously from people buying blindly just because "it's Madden"

These are the people who are indirectly hurtign the game more than anything.

Those that blindly buy Madden purchased it way before black Friday... Most anyways.

[ac-greasy]

Well I picked it up off Amazon on a Black Friday deal for $25 so EA isn't making too much of a profit from that. I would be surprised if Amazon made any profit off it. I had no intentions of picking up Madden this year but at that price it was hard to beat. I wanted to see my RTG Player from NCAA play in the NFL but I wasn't paying $60-40 for that experience.

I rented Madden this year for $10 at Blockbuster and felt violated....very disappointing game. I'm pretty much done with the franchise in general. Yes I'll read the reviews next year and may even rent it it again, but an actual purchase? No chance. Not until it's overhauled in a big way. We're talking impolded and rebuilt form the ground up...even then it will take the 3-4 years to iron the bugs (based on their track record). It's very despressing when you think about the fact that we're probably 5 years away from a real, playable, legit NFL football video game. And that's only if they make the right decisions moving forward which is very unlikely to happen. Video game football used to be the primary focus of all my gaming...now it's an after thought and not even on my radar. Thanks EA.

[Blue Line]

lets hope that EA can turn it around or that someone else can come in and bring us a football title sometime soon. i really miss a great football gaming experience.

[dj101]

It's almost like we're close to, if not already approached, the 1-15 season for EA-Madden. Trying to patch the team with gimmicks/free agents has not worked. It's now time for a regime change, and to completely start rebuilding the franchise from the bottom up. The answer is in your own game, EA. You'd have already seen that/understood that, had you actually paid attention to Franchise Mode.

[Only1LT]

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

Well I picked it up off Amazon on a Black Friday deal for $25 so EA isn't making too much of a profit from that. I would be surprised if Amazon made any profit off it. I had no intentions of picking up Madden this year but at that price it was hard to beat. I wanted to see my RTG Player from NCAA play in the NFL but I wasn't paying $60-40 for that experience.

Why would you think that EA wouldn't make any money off of your purchase, just because you got it on sale? EA sold the game to Amazon already. What they do with it after that doesn't affect them. They cashed Amazon's check months ago.

Now if you don't care about sending EA a message, then that's fine, but if you do, then you just helped them, because by buying a copy of Madden, you just depleted inventory and pushed Amazon that much closer to ordering more, thus increasing EA's sales of Madden.

I'm not saying that I am for or against that position, but from your comment, you seemed to be thinking about how your purchase did or did not affect EA, so I was just giving you clarification on your misconception.