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

Robbywales

This is the first time in 10 years that I did not buy madden day one or week one, or at all. I played the demo and yeah it’s madden 10 with slightly smoothed out graphics and a few new animations. Umm, that’s not a $60 game. I’m a hardcore madden gamer, EA ignored the hardcores, so therefore the hardcores took their money else where. Madden 11 I’ll check you out on amazon when you hit $39.99
Welker83

The people – ” I’m not buying Madden this year it sucks”, People online in Madden right now 38941, so much for that…
Aj57

Madden 11 is great game and simpler. So simple you push the A button to win the B button to lose…. Great job Ian and EA!! Good luck with your sales!
Rda03c

Ian and Phil should not be allowed to touch another sports title. They have completely destroyed Madden. I mean seriously: Madden 11′s game play is nothing short of horrid. The D is literally NON EXISTENT. The game is made for people who know nothing about football and it plays as such.
Howell_428

hey does anyone know when espn is coming to xbox live because i lose espn on sept 2 because i have bright house
Steven_p2005

I just dont see any reason to purchase this title when i can just pick up last years ncaa used for 10 bucks just like I did last year… maybe ill just skip to buying ncaa 11 next year when its 10 bucks who knows. Maddens just not worth one dime to me
Newt

It might be that gamers are slowly getting sick of the same game….EA still hasnt lived up to the hype and they lied to us straight to our faces back in 06….hate to say it but backbreaker looks closer to this than madden

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxyTUaqm2GU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02ajPL3Kna4
Welker83

I press B and Win and A to lose
http://twitter.com/chackett12 Corey Hackett

Was never really a college football guy. But all i play is NCAA 11 madden didnt seem to improve much this year… dissapointed
UBetcha

NCAA improves gameplay and presentation. Barely touches dynasty. Everyone loves.

Madden improves gameplay and presentation. Doesnt touches franchise. Everyone hates.

People (on message boards anyway) will just latch on to any reason to hate Madden. Its just not given a fair shot because the NFL wanted to give someone an exclusive. Shame.
apparently I’m furious

What do you mean? Ian *is* the producer. Personally I’d be overjoyed to see him fired.
BIG DADDY LANE

I just wanted to say that the online franchises was the best part of playing madden because people want to take there team to the super bowl. Also, why haven’t they understood that “IF IT ISN’T BROKEN DON’T BREAK IT.” I said that on purpose because the online play had dramatically dropped and the online franchise is Madden 10. Which doesn’t make sense! Who was the genius who thought showing the other teams play books was a great idea. What about the the practice mode in your online franchise as well as your offline franchise. Truly you want to talk not have team chemistry or understanding what works with your new players or putting the right people in the right positions. I will not talk about the game pad because enough has been said but I have become good at it but still not fast enough though. Whoever does the ratings why do you always slow down players who are fast? My point is guys who have speed during the combine are not having much speed in ratings. If the guy is fast let him be fast but if he wasn’t drafted or a low round pick he couldn’t be the smartest of players. I rather you have left guys who was fast and dumb before slow and dumb. WR,RB,CB if they are fast so what but they may not be able to catch, carry or play coverage. If they suck the let them suck badly, but let them do it FAST!
Anonymous

Ok, so EA trots out their football game every year and every year there is usually one crippling issue upon release accompanied with many minor annoyances. It looks like the online stuff was the big issue this year and it appears that some of that has been addressed. But the other problems with the game (strategy pad, play action, etc..) still remain. Last year we had the wounded duck QB passing and the unstoppable flat passes. If we go by history we can count on a couple of patches from EA before the game is really where it needs to be. The second patch in years past has dropped in December as the NFL is starting to wind down.

Based on all this should they be surprised if they are showing less sales year over year? Especially when the game is brand new? People are losing confidence in this game and its development team and they are doing nothing to change that perception. The patches come too little and too late.
UBetcha

PS. I’m not thrilled either…but the hate is exaggerated.
The voice of reason

Yeah, maybe so, but that doesn’t stop people from buy NBA2k. NBA2k is the Madden of basketball and there is just no denying it.
The voice of reason

You couldn’t figure that out from playing the demo before you wasted your sixty bucks. I guess your not to bright, are you?
Anonymous

You do realize that the first 2K football game was released in 1999, right?
jo momma

you need to check some slider forums on operationsports.com, particularly one by OS_Steve, they make the game so much more realistic, more playable
jo momma

your gay
James

Here’s a tip for EA… you take a year off from franchise and online franchise and we take a year off from buying the game. If the sales are indeed taking a hit it only reflects the product, not the economy. There have been plenty of games in this recession that have sold like hotcakes, some are even yearly releases.

I’m so happy I rented it… because I only wasted $4 as opposed to $60. Next year will be the same no matter what so called “improvements” they make, rent rent rent. It’s sad because footballs my favorite sport yet Nba 2k and The Show are they only sports games I buy and keep throughout the year.
jo momma

sliders
apparently I’m furious

Yes, blame it all on “that one singular issue.” It’s not that playing the demo is enough for people to tell how little changed, or that the underlying engine is still a complete trainwreck. It’s all that darn strategy pad’s fault.
Ikilled2pac2

well my 2 cents is frankly i got tired of the same ol same ol. nothing really changes they add the pro tac but doesent work like it should they say they fixed it where the o line is doing the proper blocks well blah blah after all these years i would think that wouldve been solved years ago im a huge franchise guy and for them to just leave it and not touch the thing is fucking dumb. year after year the comments are the same do more with franchise mode and superstar mode but they dont bother . i remember last year reading that this year madden was going in a different direction well it looks the same to me i live up here in canada so for me to go to ncaa 11 is a big step and im happy i did maybe cause its all different but im really enjoying it and i have no idea who most of these teams are . but i like the team builder thing tho i wish the stadiums could be custom built . if madden could incorpreate this i think it would be steller .madden i dunno man it got in a rut ,if what i reading about how ian wanted another engine but was turned down then thats ea s fault i dont know what his restrictions are but really the last three or four years are always the same and thats sad man im really hoping they do the madden the way it should be done. nhl these guys are improving every year i used to like the 2k line but last year i seriously played the hell out of nhl 10 i loved it well there were some thing that shouldve been better but this years looks so much better i cant wait for it .they go out of their way to make some huge improvements i dont know this is my 2 cents like i said i really madden can get their shit together leave this blocking and running and whatever else improvements alone add something new for fuck sakes and now im done my rant lol
Rda03c

I only play online only – sliders won’t help.
Rda03c

Well said, sir … well said.
Iancummingsneedstobefired

he has been a complete d-bag over twitter too. he is more of a PR man than a developer and equally as untalented in both departments.
Infemous

its mainly because the strat pad is impossible to get used to Ian (i will call you that until you stop chatting EA ball licking tripe)

the strat pad lags online, takes a ridiculous amount of time to do anything, and half the time doesn’t even register if you do it while people are walking to the line.

it is a complete fail and was totally unnecessary, it’s only merit being to cover up the incompetence of the dev team in ACTUALLY addressing gameplay issues such as nano blitzes etc.

funnily enough the strat pad just makes cheese plays easier as precautions to protect against them are made harder.
799

seriously man, how can you say the strat pad took all of one day to program and use that as a case FOR it?

it just shows that they spent absolutely NO time in this game, I am pretty sure the longest thing about gameflow was recording the OC and DC’s lines because that is just Ask Madden with a new interface and media promotion.

SO. if the lead feature and it’s accompanying feature (strat pad) only took say max a week to do, WHAT THE FUCK DID THEY DO FOR THE REST OF THE YEAR???
even if it took a month, WHAT THE FUCK ELSE HAVE THEY DONE?

the lightness and stupidity of Madden 11 is indefensible man.

stop licking EA’s ass
X2KFootballG0dX

The Madden Sheep are straying away from the abertois of sports gaming mediocrity. This is a good thing. As long a sales continue to drop the chances of EGAY Sports paying the exclusive fee for the NFL continue to drop.
EA Sports has personally destroyed quality licensed football games this generation and puppets like daley and other lemmings are also responsible.

Don’t buy it kiddos!!! The EA Sports Exclusive license crusade must end!!!
Willy2535

When I 1st heard about that strategy pad, I assumed it was usual annual madden slander, people jst having a go at the game like they do every year, but now after playing it, I hate the strategy pad, the old way worked sooooo much better, looking forward to the patch now!
apparently I’m furious

“Furthermore Tiburon has already stated last year that they were stripping down the code for NFL head coach and finding ways to implement it into a beefier Franchise mode. ”

Yeah, great. Tiburon has stated all kinds of things. Last year they stated that the server-side implementation of Online Franchise would allow them to make all kinds of cool changes as the year went on. What happened in real life, two roster updates in the entire season? You’re acting as though these people have a track record of following through on their promises and I really have no idea why you would extend that level of trust to them when they continually fail to follow through. Last year they said they stripped Superstar so they could rebuild it — how’s Superstar looking this year? These people are professional liars. Whether people want to accept that or naively swallow another round of Ian & Donny’s BS is up to them, but I’m not down with it.

“You will have your damn Franchise mode when they are finished with it.”

Then they’ll have my damn money when they are finished with it.

“Most of you act like you don’t know how EA operates.”

And you act like EA is entitled to peoples’ money regardless of what they deliver. You suppose it’s any coincidence we’re having this discussion in a thread about poor sales?
apparently I’m furious

“If you wanted a better franchise mode, there’s not a better way to do it than to completely re-do the system, because franchise has been terribly poor.”

So what will the excuse be when Madden ’12 ships with a franchise mode identical to this year’s version? Here I was thinking that EA was a gigantic corporation with profits out the wazoo, and that it was actually possible to do what is known as “hiring” more of what I believe are referred to as “coders” so that the project could be completed… umm… how do you say it? “Faster.” If they really gave a crap about the customers who play franchise they’d put more resources into it to fix it ASAP rather than giving us a middle finger with the words “we’re redoing it, so just stfu” written on it and going back to their usual slow pace of doing halfassed work.
apparently I’m furious

EA Tiburon at this point is guilty until proven innocent. When you hear Ian saying how totally awesome next year’s Madden will be, think of Brett Favre talking about how he totally won’t be playing next year. Rent, flash&burn, or flat-out steal yourself a copy of Madden before you give these cretins any more of your money in the future. They’re counting on their BS marketing machine to get you excited long enough to get you on the hook, and it only takes 15-30 minutes with the game to tell how much work they’ve actually done.

Incidentally, I do a little coding myself and know some people who are talented programmers. There’s no way in hell the amount of work that went into this took a talented coder any more than a couple weeks to pump out. The art, MoCap, recording Gus Johnson, etc. obviously adds time but Ian, Donny, etc. don’t work on that anyway. This game itself is really not that complicated, and it’s obvious from playing the game that Tiburon either isn’t trying to make good AI or (more likely) is staffed by people who can’t code their way outt’ve a wet paper bag.

Maybe it really did take them a full 12 months to crank out this abomination, but that’s no excuse. Codewise there’s still two weeks of effort tops, and there’s no way in hell I’m rewarding that behavior, especially in this economy. They’re so used to having the exclusivity deal that they don’t even feel the need to try, and thankfully it finally looks like it’s catching up to them.
apparently I’m furious

Well said. Poor doesn’t even begin to describe it. It’s been five years since Madden first hit the 360 and we’re still missing features that were available on the PS2. When you have a pre-existing codebase that contains features that people want and you can’t manage to port them over in the span of FIVE YEARS then either there is something horribly wrong with your design process or your coders are lazy to a degree that defies human comprehension. Add that to their approach to the current-gen engine itself — ie. to constantly tack new tweaks, fixes and workarounds onto a fundamentally flawed engine — and I’m left thinking that the only real hope for a decent product is that when they (apparently) start from absolute scratch on whatever new system(s) come(s) next, we get lucky enough that they happen to assign some quality people to it and it’s solid from the get-go. Ian & Donny’s crew only seems capable of tinkering around the margins, and in the process they cause almost as many problems as they fix. Remember the blog last year about making fullbacks take a step to the side to fix dive plays? That was a workaround that became necessary when their previous workaround of having the QB drop back at accelerated speeds to avoid nanos led to FB dives being overpowered in the first place. They’re too slow to realize when a complete teardown is necessary and when they finally promise one (ie. Superstar last year) it doesn’t seem to materialize. Yeah, I’m pretty cynical and I don’t think very highly of Ian or Donny, but I think it also says a lot about how far the Madden franchise has fallen that I’ve already given up on getting any improvements to franchise mode for *next* year.
apparently I’m furious

Oh and we’d better hope to whatever respective deities we may or may not worship that Padre’s last paragraph in the original post doesn’t come true. The last thing we need is EA Sports figuring out a way to consistently increase profits without increasing the effort/resources they put into the game. There are lots of “Madden Roster Update ’11″ jokes already, but I don’t even want to think about where the game could go if they start focusing more and more on DLC, microtransactions and in-game advertising. They already created “Swagger” for the express purposes of licensing it to Old Spice.
Jay

But we should complain about every minute problem in 2K games right? So we can be douchebag EA homers like you?
KrisT

If sales are down i hope they realize its cause they focused on stuff that people dont really care about. Like how last year NCAA went down in sales cause of the Season Showdown shit. Now its back up cause NCAA 11 is actually good.
http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/ABLC757UG25E6RN7OECFE57JLA Daniel

Madden’s sales have been dropping for years now; why would this year be any different?

No major new features, franchise/superstar are in desperate need of repair, and online franchises are still done far worse then they are implemented in NCAA.

Over the past few years, look at what NCAA has done: Upgraded dynasty mode several times (I love the new recruiting mechanism), and implemented a fully functional online dynasty that is EXACTLY the same as offline is. For Madden…you have a Superstar mode with obvious bugs that have been around for years, franchise is simply uninspiring (Can you still trade picks right before week 6 to get better draft position?), and online mode is significantly dumbed down compared to offline mode.

Worse, EA is trying to reach more then one target audiance; besides gamers, they are trying to reach more casual gamers (remember last years option that allows you to replay a bad play?). A lot of people are turned off by this.

So yes, NCAA sales should rise, because the devs made significant upgrades to the game the past two years. Maddens sales should continue to drop, because the game is simply stale.
Anonymous

The NFL forced EA to buy the rights when they decided to sell them to 1 company to make more money. Just sayin 2K had an equal opportunity to buy it
http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/ABLC757UG25E6RN7OECFE57JLA Daniel

I disagree; NCAA has redone dynastry twice over the past three years; the new recruiting system is gold, and really brings recruting to life. Nevermind the online dynasties, which are perfectly done and mostly bug free. Meanwhile, despite people like me BEGGING EA for years to fix the flaws in dynasty mode (and theres a LOT), they’ve refused to address them. Superstar mode is also functionally broken, and online franchises are basically nerfed versions of their offline mode.
Anonymous

Ian is a socker fan. That fact alone should get him fired from madden
apparently I’m furious

So you’re right because you brought up Tecmo Bowl? Nobody brought up that stuff in 1992 because it was FREAKING 1992 and consoles weren’t technically capable. You’re not really saying you think the SNES could pull off everything the PS3 can are you? And if it really is all about overly high expectations then whose fault is that? Who keeps telling us that the #1 goal is realism? Who keeps pumping up how awesomely true-to-life the game is? I guess it was the fans that trademarked “If it’s in the game, it’s in the game” eh?

You’re the latest in a long line of “take what you get and be happy” trolls. And I’m the latest in a long line of “I always want more” trolls. Fortunately for me I’m right, so it works out. (ha) Nell is so right on that it hurts my brain to think about it by the way. Honestly if someone can just tell me how to get Madden ’11 graphics on the NFL 2k5 engine I’ll be satisfied and go away.
apparently I’m furious

Or really, if someone can tell me how to make Madden 08 on the PC have a current roster and drafts that aren’t full of completely worthless players after the 3rd round, that’d be even more betterer.
um

they should take a year off the whole game and come back with a good game
Dazzdp

Madden sales are down because the game sucks, POINT BLANK!! It’s insulting to see them put out a half-ass worked on game. They have to do better. Remember Madden wouldn’t have casual fans to go after if it was for the hardcore fans, so why screw the original supporters over. EA needs to learn from NBA2K and MLB the show, they know how to deliver sports games for the people who love the game.
Dazzdp

there’s always somewhere to go…they just have the wrong people. And anyone okay with supporting small doses is EA’s bitch. If I pay my money for a product, I expect the best, or at least some type of design from the development team that shows they give a damn about the art of creating a game. They’ve become that shitty ass singer on the radio that song gets played a million times and nobody knows why because everyone who talks about it says that song sucks.
Dazzdp

You need some real ideas EA…HIRE ME!!!! you want someone who can give you real innovative thought with business still in mind…HIRE ME!!!! I’d damn near work for free to get this crap back on track.
Dazzdp

You need some real ideas EA…HIRE ME!!!! you want someone who can give you real innovative thought with business still in mind…HIRE ME!!!! I’d damn near work for free to get this crap back on track.
Omegaswizz

yup i sure broughgt down madden myself just because of the strategy pad. plus this being the 1st year i ever bought ncaa11 it showed me how gameplay wise presentation wise and online dynasty wise that it is wayy better then madden.
I am not a hater

Yea for the first time in his life daley was actually making some sense until the 2nd to last sentence which is completely FALSE. I almost ALMOST even clicked “like” on your comment. Those guys have been nothing but a big bucket of fail their entire tenure there.