Madden 11 Struggling to Meet Sales Expectations?

by pastapadre
Posted August 20th, 2010 at 12:49 pm

I’ve seen quite a bit of chatter today regarding some thoughts that initial indications are the sales for Madden 11 have been disappointing. At this point there is absolutely no concrete data to suggest sales are down. However this CNBC article seems to have stirred up discussion by making some purely unsubstantiated assumptions. While we won’t know the official sales numbers for Madden’s first month until mid-September there are some things to examine now.

As cited in the article, and something I noticed immediately, multiple retailers (Gamestop, Amazon, Walmart) dropped the price of Madden 11 in the days that followed release. Those prices have since bounced back up, though deals can still be found through Amazon and Walmart.

UFC Undisputed 2010 was dropped at some outlets to $39.99 within a week after it released. That foretold what would be a huge sales slide for the series so in that case it was a sign that the game was in trouble. However I passed over writing an article on the subject because things just don’t match up the same as it relates to Madden.

Madden 11 was never truly $60 to begin with. Preorders included Amazon offering $20 off a future game purchase, Walmart providing a $20 gift card, and Gamestop giving 20,000 coins ($6.67 value). So seeing Madden at $50 or thereabouts now really shouldn’t be setting off any alarms. If gamers couldn’t be tempted to preorder with those deals, why would they be expected to pick up the game for the full $60 now?

NCAA Football 11 had sales rise by 8% in its first month, so there is no reason to think that Madden couldn’t sustain numbers from last year or even see a small bump as NCAA did. My gut though is that sales will be slightly down. I don’t think the casual focus resonated successfully to bring in new gamers and at the same time may have alienated frustrated long-time fans of the series, reviews were flat with last year, word of mouth doesn’t seem as positive, and early issues particularly with online play may have been enough to keep some away.

Keep in mind though that even if sales turn out to be slightly down EA Sports could very well still make more money on Madden this year due to the prevalence of downloadable content, Madden Ultimate Team mode, the “Online Pass” being sold to those who pick up used copies, and the advertising that has been heavily integrated into the game.

Tags: latest news, sales analysis

Omegaswizz

me and my friends have way more fun on ncaa online dynasty then any game mode of madden. and being able to access your dynasty online when your away from the console is genius. the people that make ncaa should make madden
I am not a hater

Wow….smh…..this is like textbook example of false advertising. I wouldn’t expect any less from EA. they have 2 make great misleading trailers because their games suck ballz.
Jamescurtisjr

i hope that madden sales continue to drop because they game has lost its touch it hasnt improved that much over the years it still cant compete with nfl 2k5 they need 2 buy the euporiha engine the game for 2011 is average.
I am not a hater

because of the 50 bajillion different player ratings madden has now, speed is still the only one that matters.

Also, Donny Moore the selfproclaimed Ratings Czar more like Ratings Dumbass sucks at life and i seriously hope he dies in a car accident tomorrow. it’s not fair that he gets to conitinually be such a complete fuckup and be so terrible at a job that thousands of people would gladly do for free. Fuck him. go die.
realz

Yea right that little bitch Ian didn’t want a new engine. That little turd doesn’t know anything about what Madden needs. He’s so clueless. Everyone at ea knows heads are going to roll. Let the finger pointing begin because blaming other people and making excuses is what they do best over at ea.
fuckyou

Would somebody just put a dick in that guy’s mouth, please? ‘Cause that’s what he wants. He’s a cocksucker in disguise. He’s got his mouth open ’cause he wants someone to cum in it. Now, do you wanna keep making noise, motherfucker, and we can find you that way, or are you just a punk coward asshole bullshit loud motherfucker and you’re gonna shut up now so we don’t find out where the fuck you’re sitting? ‘Cause if you keep it up, we’ll grab your ass and throw you on the fucking street, where you belong, with your mother! And I’m fucking her in the asshole every night anyway, so fuck you and your sister and your wife! If you got a kid, I hope your fucking kid dies in a car fire! How do you like that, you stupid cocksucker? Shut the fuck up and get the fuck out of here or tell me your name so I can find you you are you Ian Himself! … You know? See … You gotta use psychology. You gotta be a bit of a psychologist up here and know how to appeal to a person like EA does…LOL!!!!
jkaisen41

Who is really wondering about that – let’s face it – 2011 is good and fun especially the running game – but I’ve been expecting this for last years madden (basically I expected that offensive linemen do their job and block for 4ever) – that’s why I got 2010 – this madden is basically 2010 done the right way (- strategy pad) – I won’t spend my money on an update series from Madden 2010 – I’m an offline gamer – franchise and be a superstar mode wasn’t even touched – so why should I spend 60 bucks on it???

Sorry EA, even though I like the new running game, I will play the demo for a year and look what happens next year – I won’t buy this year 100% sure
Osackpo98

EA Sports is the one who makes the games, I’m the consumer. It’s their job to sell me on buying their game. If their excuse for why there isn’t any franchise mode is “it’s not done yet” that’s not acceptable, especially since their product will be out again next season. They have to give as much as they can in order to make a sale. If EA holds things back with the belief it makes future games better, they’re losing money now, so it’s ridiculous. If that’s your company model, I don’t know why on earth you’d be defending that with your life.

The exclusive licenses is what I think causes Madden to drop in quality. (And I’ve always played madden, never NFL 2k5 so don’t think that’s where i’m going). The fact is, when you have competition it causes the companies to step up and make better games and get features out in time. You can easily see the competition with elite and 2k basketball, NHL by EA and 2k. The games with no competition often get stagnant. Madden needs someone to compete against, that’ll get it to step up.
CrimsonVoodoo

It’s only one example – but we ran a 12 person league last year and ran for 3 seasons. Of the 12 there are 5 of us that haven’t bothered to pick up Madden yet. Some of this is EA’s fault – it really is hard to justify spending $60 every year on a game that plays like a “big patch” version of the prior year’s game … never mind the curious micro transaction focus on just about every facet of online play … this is a franchise that really needs to make a splash next year with a complete overhaul across the board as opposed to the 3-4 new features they trot out every season to entice buyers
UBetcha

I guess i disagree that the dynasty has been “redone” as much as you say. Which is fine, jsut an opinion. Although the recruiting mechanic has changed it ‘plays’ the same to me. Just feels stale with a little bit of paint on it. Online dynasty i would agree made strides with the dynasty wire stuff, but again i dont think it feels much different than last year.

I guess i also dont see why everyone hates Madden franchise mode (offline) so much in the first place. You play, you import guys, you draft, free agents, trades. Could it be deeper? Sure, but i wouldnt call it a bad experience by a long shot. I actually feel like NCAA needs more of a refresh then madden does as far as how the dynasty mode feels and plays.

Superstar mode i dont care about anyway (same for NCAA). So ill just take your word for it.
UBetcha

Good thing 2K’s exclusive license has really given us the best baseball………………….

…..oh wait.
Litz

I hope the sales are hurting. This years game made some nice changes on the field. I enjoy game planning and the new blocking system but the game has no replay value. Madden Ultimate is a good idea that could be fun but its been plagued by quitting. Now they prorate the coins for people quit on however I just played 2 games in a row where I got a disconnected from peer message and kicked back to the madden ultimate screen and got 0 coins! 1.5 hours wasted! I was up 21 points in the 4th quarter and my opponent paused the game 3 times and took 2 delay of game penalties and then the peer disconnected message. Second time I run the ball into the end zone for a touchdown to go up 21 and before my player can even celebrates I get the peer disconnected message. I suspect EA is only prorating coins when people go to quit in the menu so they are just pulling their network connection. This is rediculous! This combined with the fact that were was no changes at all made to franchise mode disgusts me! Even in the Extra Point they call the new Meadowlands stadium Giants Stadium still yet you can see they recorded new lines for “brought to you by Verizon Wireless”. They charge $60 for the game and have more ads then ever before and they claim they can’t get a revamped franchise mode done in a year?!?! Come on! They have ads in the main screen of the game, on the ticker, inside the game, and charge $60? COME ON! I’ve been a staunch supporter of Madden in the past but this year they’ve gone too far!
Ceegee

Because the game sukcs year in and year out.

What do you expect EA???
Anonymous

im so gay i fuck ur mother and sister, u little bitch
Melr2

Well Daley, I will say this, I didn’t have high hopes for NCAA11 but it rocks. It plays a VERY good game of football, with various outcomes. I am not a college football fan as I am an NFL fan, but Madden just sucks. There is no getting around it. This team of producers (maybe due to corporate EA who knows) made Madden 11…and it is NOT even a passing wiff of any NFL football I watch on Sunday. No Defense, stuttering play, hell, even the jersey numbers are EFFED UP, a new one for this year. I could go on and on.
You know, we all want the same thing….a game we look forward to play, one we will take shit from our girlfriends/wives for staying up all night to play. Madden just ain’t that anymore. I hope competition comes back, then EA will get off their ass and go to work.
Alkatrazzz

My biggest beef was the fact that they didn’t get the online franchise fixed! I would have bought this years, but after the disappointment of last years franchise, i made a decision to never purchase another roster updated game until they fix it….

This is my favorite game of all time, but until they get the ONLINE FRANCHISE right, i’m finished!
Anonymous

Big difference is online dynasty works in NCAA. That is a huge draw. If online franchise would have worked correctly for Madden it would be a hit. Well that and fix the weak defense and broken tackle BS.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=727953133 Brian Simpson

Obviously you are not a long time Madden player. It is not how quickly the strategy pad can be learned that is the issue. It is how long it would take to unlearn the old and more efficient way of doing things. It would be the equivalent of all the car companies putting the steering wheel in the back seat of the car. The strategy pad is one of those things that you just know if EA had focus grouped the game even a little bit would have realized it was a bad idea. The MAIN issue with the strategy pad is that I have to say that I want to use it by pushing anywhere on the d-pad an then I get to start making changes. All subsequent changes don’t require this pre-press, unless you call an audible afterwards. All this is completely unnecessary and makes it almost impossible to do any pre-snap adjustments with out thinking about it (like almost every madden veteran could do in their sleep in previous years) They have essentially crippled the gameplay
Prince Oochi

NCAA drastically improved by comparison to Madden. NCAA got the overhaul it has been long overdue for. One of the things going against Madden this season is EA usually doesn’t bring over Madden’s new features and gameplay improvements until the following season. NCAA had the reputation of being called Madden Lite. But this season NCAA had just about every practical enhancement that Madden received so it kind of took away the “wow” factor being that gamers had already experienced the gameplay mechanic a whole month earlier with NCAA.
realz

His name is tim daley. Please do us all a favor and find him and beat the shit out of him. Thank you.
Joe

hello, remember the times before online? it was all about offline franchise. how long will it take for them to fix it? ive been waiting since 06 asshole. is that long enuff? instead they implement the same damn things but just change them a little bit. fuck the strat pad. leave it the way it was. have you ever heard of if its not broke dont fix it!? there is nothing innovative about it. they just changed the way it works and it takes longer to archive what your trying to do. All in all fuck maddens. same old bullshit just new rosters. its a joke. ive been buying maddens since 93. ive taken all i can take. this could be my last maddens purchase for a while.
IIII 47 IIII

This is what happens when you take a game aimed towards the hardcore crowd and dumb it down. Hopefully the ones responsible for the changes will be fired and EA will have learned its lesson.
Dominic

I love Madden usually and was always excited to get it but it seems since it came over to the next gen console it went down hill quick. Madden with Shaun Alexander was the worst, last years Madden was challenging but it now seems like EA has completely forgot that franchise mode is the most important thing in the game, you basically cant do anything in the game with the same freedom you get in franchise mode, Roster changes are way easier to do in franchise mode then just roster mode. I would say that the college game is what they are concentrating more on because they think they got all the NFL license and the Madden name that they dont have concentrate on this game anymore but they do on the college game because no one in that game has there name. I would say that the NCCA game has been better for the last 3 – 5 years there has always been more freedom on the field with that game. Madden was better when they added one thing and everything else was basically the same and it was on the XBox.
Anonymous

This is the first year ever that not only did I not buy Madden because of all the sugar coating they put on it for casual players, but it is also the first year ever that I purchased the NCAA series. It’s just so much more in depth with Dynasty and they didn’t fill it with fluff to get new players that apparently wouldn’t have been able to figure out the original controls… Strategy Pad?? That was the deal breaker for me. I know the original controls are to be added back in the first patch but I’m not dealing with that crap. We were waiting for fix after fix for Madden 10 and some stuff was never fixed. I’ll likely not buy Madden again until I start hearing from others that the game is actually complete, and good. For now I’ll stick to NCAA 11 as I’m having a lot of fun with it. Hopefully EA doesn’t kill that game as well…. :-/
maddengamersdontknowshit

Why are all of you so scared of change. After two games of the strategy pad, I got used to it and now prefer it. It cuts down on your hand going all over the controller to make adjustments and only gives you two buttons to use. Better in my opinion!
http://www.facebook.com/people/Corey-Ragland/13752595 Corey Ragland

The sole reason for my not buying the game right away was franchise mode. No reason for me to drop $60 for the same game as Madden 10. I think franchise mode was better when I was playing it on my PS1 and PS2 than it is on the 360. I know they’re not gonna do ALOT in one year, but doing SOMETHING to it. I feel like the only thing to have changed in it since 08 is the potential rating, that I coincidentally hate
Pamirt

lets look at the bright side… madden 12 cant go no where but up
Pamirt

lets look at the bright side… madden 12 cant go no where but up
tecmobrowns

Come on just break the exclusive contract with EAQ Let 2k show what a real nfl game can be!
Easyreader2

Its the economy. Yea NCAA sales are up and maybe the same people can only afford one and not NCAA and Madden this year.
LHR witness

seriously? people need to stop whining. the strategy pad is not as bad as people say. i always have plenty of time to get all my audibles and defensive hot routes in before the ball is snapped. and i like it even better on offense. it helps many who didn’t know how to make all those shifts before. and people like me who have been playing the game for years can still do our thing.