[pietasterp]

Agree w/ the above.

Look, we're stuck with Madden for the foreseeable future. The barrier to entry at this point for another company is too high even if the NFL made the license available to anyone that wanted it. Heck, even if it were completely free to get an NFL license, the amount of money to develop a football game from scratch at this point probably wouldn't even be worth it (you'd be hard-pressed to recoup your development costs).

The sales numbers are interesting in that it gives you a sense of where Madden is in comparison to the biggest franchises in gaming, but that's about it. As we've all seen, EA's (and every big publisher's) long-term goal with all games is to turn them into recurring, perpetual monetization machines, and they will start with their largest properties. Look at FIFA as a direct roadmap to where Madden is headed: it's all about the Ultimate Team and microtransaction-based gameplay. Every decision about the game will be based on how it impacts that monetization, not on making a more accurate or better football game. The days of trying to make the best football game possible are over; that ended in 2005.

Sales of a game are relevant to EA only insofar as it gives them an installed base to leverage for future recurring microtransactions. That's the way it is with pretty much all games now and forever going forward; the gaming industry is just different now. Whether it's better or worse is a matter of personal opinion.