Madden's Current Gen Has Not Been a Success

[SpeedyMikeWallace]

Re: Madden's Current Gen Has Not Been a Success

I'm sorry, but 5 million units sold @ $59.99 is nearly $300 million. I don't care what their costs are, they're making "a lot of $".

[roadman]

Re: Madden's Current Gen Has Not Been a Success

I'm sorry, but 5 million units sold @ $59.99 is nearly $300 million. I don't care what their costs are, they're making "a lot of $".

You can't just dismiss cost and throw it away from the equation. That isn't the way business is run.

Then why is their stock so low on the market?

People have this impression that EA is making $ hand over fist, but according to their stock price, they aren't.

[SpeedyMikeWallace]

Re: Madden's Current Gen Has Not Been a Success

When you're making $300 million annually off of a single title, you can pretty much count costs as negligible in the grand scheme of it. There's no possible way those kinds of sales are netting the title anywhere near negative. Even if they give 15% to the retailers and paid everyone that worked on the game $300,000, they'd still be making the kind of money most studios would dream of making.

Madden's success alone isn't going to make much a difference for the ENTIRE company. EA is a massive company with multiple studios and subsidiaries working under the Electronic Arts "umbrella". Madden isn't even their biggest sports title, FIFA is.

[airboss75]

Re: Madden's Current Gen Has Not Been a Success

Nice blog but this whole topic has been beaten to death. You didn't mention anything new that has not been said or written in the past five years.

From my standpoint and a longtime gamer (have played every rendition of Madden since its Apple II days) Madden isn't a failure. To gamers, yes, the game has not lived up to a certain level of expectation especially on consoles that are to have more power. From an economic standpoint, people are still buying Madden. If Madden is so bad, how is it making so much money? Simple -- There are people out there who find the game fun.

I am on the fence. When the 360 / PS3 era came about, my expectations mirrored everyone else's. I couldn't wait to see what EA would do with more graphical power and with consoles having HDD as a norm, EA was sure to break out all the stops. Instead, what we got was a stripped down game that didn't have nearly the features the PS2 / XBox versions had.

Since that time, the Madden series improved little by little each year. Madden 09 and 10 were great games with Madden 10 taking visual leaps over its predecessor. The problem with Madden is that there are people want it to fail that they spend every waking moment looking for bugs, glitches, issues, etc. and blogging, writing in forums and recording videos that go straight to YouTube for all to see.

I understand why people do this. They want competition back which is a great thing.

In looking at what the NCAA 11 team did, this has to push the ante for the Madden team because NCAA 11, although not perfect, is one of the best console football games to date. It is visually pleasing as well as the online dynasty has to be one of the best multi-player features ever (outside of BAP in NHL).

To compare Madden to a game like Backbreaker is almost criminal. First, to say a developer with fewer resources created a revolutionary physics engine is a tad slanted. Keep in mind that the developer of Back Breaker developed the physics engine first THEN creaeted a football game as a way to show it off. They aren't a football game developer who created a great physics engine. Also, your blog makes it seem as if they created this physics engine in one development cycle which isn't the case. NatualMotion was working on that physics engine for years and it took almost as long to release BackBreaker.

I have no issues with the physics engine that is currently utilized in Madden and NCAA. Only those that cannot get past the simple fact that these are games and they will never fully emulate reality will continue to be "unhappy" with the state of Madden and other games.

Couldn't agree more here. Especially with the bolded. Madden/NCAA are pretty solid in my opinion. A dash of good presentation and a little more depth within franchise and it'll be all the way good to go if ya ask me. Floats my boat right now though. Madden 10/11 (although I never have time) make me want to play more than one franchise game in a row. Now thats impressive!

I didn't have that urge from 06 up to 09.

[LiquorLogic]

Re: Madden's Current Gen Has Not Been a Success

I'm sorry, but 5 million units sold @ $59.99 is nearly $300 million. I don't care what their costs are, they're making "a lot of $".

They(EA) paid the NFL nine figures in cash during this whole exclusive fiasco. You also have to account for development, marketing, and distribution costs. EA isn't making 59.99 off of every copy of Madden that they sell.

[SpeedyMikeWallace]

Re: Madden's Current Gen Has Not Been a Success

They(EA) paid the NFL nine figures in cash during this whole exclusive fiasco. You also have to account for development, marketing, and distribution costs. EA isn't making 59.99 off of every copy of Madden that they sell.

I already had a post covering how their expenses are negligible in the face of that amount of money.

Even if the game required...:

- $30 million in development costs
- $1 million for cover art and cases
- $10 million in advertisements
- 15% to retailers
(all of which are probably astronomically high)

...EA would still bank well over $200 million. They are making A LOT of money.

[Exonerated]

Re: Madden's Current Gen Has Not Been a Success

I already had a post covering how their expenses are negligible in the face of that amount of money.

Even if the game required...:

- $30 million in development costs
- $1 million for cover art and cases
- $10 million in advertisements
- 15% to retailers
(all of which are probably astronomically high)

...EA would still bank well over $200 million. They are making A LOT of money.

yeh. because 200 million is a lot for a 6.28 billion dollar company...

[roadman]

Re: Madden's Current Gen Has Not Been a Success

I already had a post covering how their expenses are negligible in the face of that amount of money.

Even if the game required...:

- $30 million in development costs
- $1 million for cover art and cases
- $10 million in advertisements
- 15% to retailers
(all of which are probably astronomically high)

...EA would still bank well over $200 million. They are making A LOT of money.

Minus exclusive liscense fee brings it into the red.

[SpeedyMikeWallace]

Re: Madden's Current Gen Has Not Been a Success

Minus exclusive liscense fee brings it into the red.

The exclusive license fee is $300 million over 5 years. They don't pay that amount for each game. So, if they're paying $60 million for each game in licenses, they're still bringing in $150 million A YEAR, that's about $750 million they've made on the deal.

[SpeedyMikeWallace]

Re: Madden's Current Gen Has Not Been a Success

yeh. because 200 million is a lot for a 6.28 billion dollar company...

I assure you, if EA were to lose $200 million, they'd be upset about it.

[SteelaNati0n]

Re: Madden's Current Gen Has Not Been a Success

I still have a question, why does EVERYONE on the internet (forums mostly) hate on this game? I understand they dont make alot of upgrades year to year but I mean its still a great game.

[SpeedyMikeWallace]

Re: Madden's Current Gen Has Not Been a Success

Because they make you pay full price for a game that probably has $20 worth of upgrades from the previous version. Honestly, the amount of changes between one game and the next could be contained in a $20 DLC.

[roadman]

Re: Madden's Current Gen Has Not Been a Success

Also, you a bit low on the retailer end.

I've read where EA makes between $30-$40 on the retail end.

So, now you are down to less than 100 million in revenue.

Big difference from your original $300 million.

[turftickler]

Nice blog but this whole topic has been beaten to death. You didn't mention anything new that has not been said or written in the past five years.

From my standpoint and a longtime gamer (have played every rendition of Madden since its Apple II days) Madden isn't a failure. To gamers, yes, the game has not lived up to a certain level of expectation especially on consoles that are to have more power. From an economic standpoint, people are still buying Madden. If Madden is so bad, how is it making so much money? Simple -- There are people out there who find the game fun.

I am on the fence. When the 360 / PS3 era came about, my expectations mirrored everyone else's. I couldn't wait to see what EA would do with more graphical power and with consoles having HDD as a norm, EA was sure to break out all the stops. Instead, what we got was a stripped down game that didn't have nearly the features the PS2 / XBox versions had.

Since that time, the Madden series improved little by little each year. Madden 09 and 10 were great games with Madden 10 taking visual leaps over its predecessor. The problem with Madden is that there are people want it to fail that they spend every waking moment looking for bugs, glitches, issues, etc. and blogging, writing in forums and recording videos that go straight to YouTube for all to see.

I understand why people do this. They want competition back which is a great thing.

In looking at what the NCAA 11 team did, this has to push the ante for the Madden team because NCAA 11, although not perfect, is one of the best console football games to date. It is visually pleasing as well as the online dynasty has to be one of the best multi-player features ever (outside of BAP in NHL).

To compare Madden to a game like Backbreaker is almost criminal. First, to say a developer with fewer resources created a revolutionary physics engine is a tad slanted. Keep in mind that the developer of Back Breaker developed the physics engine first THEN creaeted a football game as a way to show it off. They aren't a football game developer who created a great physics engine. Also, your blog makes it seem as if they created this physics engine in one development cycle which isn't the case. NatualMotion was working on that physics engine for years and it took almost as long to release BackBreaker.

I have no issues with the physics engine that is currently utilized in Madden and NCAA. Only those that cannot get past the simple fact that these are games and they will never fully emulate reality will continue to be "unhappy" with the state of Madden and other games.

I'm sorry, but did your read your post?

Madden NFL games have gotten worse since Madden 08. The only reason Madden 08 was just an okay football game was because, EA Sports saw that 2k Sports was back on the scene in 07. I can guarantee you all that if 2k Sports were to come out and say that their football game development team is up and running, EA Sports and company would be running around like chickens with their heads cut off.

EA Sports sees 2k Sports as a threat to their success (whatever you want to call it). Therefore, when the see 2k making moves, they get the best material out again. Notice how ESPN NFL 2k4 made a statement in 03, then EA Sports stepped up their game with Madden 04. The same thing happened with ESPN NFL 2k5, EA stepped it up once again with Madden NFL 05. Are we seeing the whole picture here, now?

NaturalMotion comes starts developing BackBreaker, EA stepped things up with with Madden 10. Backbreaker is released in 2010, then Madden NFL 11 was a better game for that reason.

By the pattern we have seen with EA Sports and their Madden NFL series, truly competition breeds a better product. If we don't believe by now that EA Sports will only string us along every year until some viable competition shows up, they will continue to give us stuff like, I don't know, the "Trick Onsides Kick".

As far as Pro-Tak, it's just pro-wack. It's just another allusion, but once you see the replays, you can clearly saw all of the flaws in those games.

Sure, these are just video games and they are not meant to replace real sports. This is about replace real sports. It's about giving the NFL video game fan base what they are asking for. If they can't do that, then they need to do the honorable thing and step down so 2k Sports and NaturalMotion can take a crack at NFL simulation games. Then EA Sports can continue their path to the greatest arcade sports games of all time.

[SpeedyMikeWallace]

Re: Madden's Current Gen Has Not Been a Success

Also, you a bit low on the retailer end.

I've read where EA makes between $30-$40 on the retail end.

So, now you are down to less than 100 million in revenue.

Big difference from your original $300 million.

They're still netting over $100 million (the game doesn't cost $30 million to make nor do they spend $10 million advertising it) annually. No matter how you try your damnedest to whittle it down, EA is making a lot of money. There are studios that never even touch that kind of money.