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Game Sales Up As Madden Leads Charge
Thanks to Reuters for their report that last month's video game sales rose 4 percent from August 2002, due in significant part to EA's Madden NFL 2004, which "...sold 1.45 million units on the PS2 and 310,000 units on the Xbox in the month, generating sales of more than $86 million. Sales of Madden for GameCube were negligible." There were new figures on hardware sales, too, as "PS2 sold 291,000 units in August to bring its installed base in the United States to 18.8 million, while... Xbox sold 144,000 units to rise to 5.8 million and... GameCube sold 100,000 units to 4.5 million." Analysts suggested that PS2 sales "continue to lag behind expectations" (1 million short of the 9.5 million hoped), and predicted that Nintendo will "...introduce their own bundle or price cut by the end of September" (scanned early-October print ads for a major US retailer have the GameCube at $99.)
They are appallingly low.
This seems to suggest that GC owners are not sports fans (or not football fans, anyways) - 7% of PS2 owners bought Madden , 5% of XBox owners, but 0% (???) of GC owners... Come to think of it, I own a GC (and N64) and I have never bought a sports title...
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No wonder Sega didn't put ESPN on the Gamcube. I'd expect to see quite a few EA sports games dropped from Gamcube next year too.
Damn! The only time I buy ANY sports titles is for playing on my GameCube. I hate the PS2 and Xbox controllers.
And I got Madden 2004 for GameCube. I think the biggest problem with Madden 2004 is the crappy jukebox in this version. Really doesn't go well for the Nintendo crowd.
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If the public of Gamecube is mainly made of children and teenager (everybody says so), and the football fans are mainly on the 25-40 yo (just guessing) range then it would be quite logic that Madden for the GC can't sell really well.
But well, being born in a continent where football is game of foot and balls use to be round maybe I am missing something ; )
I'd like to see how many XBOX owners passed on Madden due to its lack of Live support. I'm sure the folks at Sega (ESPN Football) aren't complaining!
I bought Madden 2004 for the GameCube and returned it (unopened of course) when I discovered that for the same price I could be playing online with the PS2. I don't have a PS2, but I decided that was a bunch of crap -- if they want to sell something which is worth half as much (Madden 2004 on GC) for the same price as the "full version", expect nobody to buy it.
That said, I have NHL 2004 on pre-order for the GC, even though it doesn't have online play. I just love my NHL too damned much.
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I think I know the reason that the gamecube sales are so low for Madden. For the first time, people own multiple consoles. I, for example, own both a PS2 and a GameCube. If I was going to buy Madden 2004, which console do you think I would buy it for, PS2 or GC? PS2 of course. Why? Online play. All the online game review sites have said that the PS2 version is the best because it is the only one that offers online play, even the Xbox one doesn't offer that (Which is why PS2 sales of madden are almost 5 times that of the Xbox). Another Example: Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance. 2 Versions, GC & PS2. I bought PS2. Why? All the reviews said the GC version was flawed. What have I bought For GC. Nintendo titles. F-Zero GX, Super Smash Bros., Metroid Prime, Super Mario Sunshine. The only non-Nintendo title I have for GC is Rogue Squadron 2. Why, because all the other titles are BETTER on the other platforms, and Nintendo's in house titles kick butt on their own. Sorry, didn't mean to rant. Just saw something obvious and thought I'd point it out. Dormous Listening @ the door of IT.
I know that Japanese monthly sales are put out in magazines, but does anybody know of a place to go and see US monthly game sales figures? I wanted to see how Soul Calibur 2 sold between the various platforms, and look at a few other things. I know NPD Funworld releases them, and the VSDA release weekly rental charts, but anybody know of a good place to find monthly sales figures?
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For the first time people own multiple consoles? Pardon me but I have owned multiple consoles since the NES generation. If you look at sales of the Madden series in the Genesis/SNES days, you'll see similar figures where the Genesis version outsold the SNES version by a lot - the Genesis one was just better. Multiple consoles in a household is not new.
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Are NHL 2003 from EA, and NHL Hitz Pro. Sega 2K4 (aka ESPN Hockey) is not releasing on the GameCube. The September issue of Game Insider had a column by column comparison of the 4 hockey games for 2004 (it includes the XBox only game from Microsoft, NHL Rivals).
If Sega 2K4 (aka ESPN Hockey) was coming to the Cube there would be debate -- but it is NOT. It is a decision between EA and Midway, and it's a pretty damned easy decision there. EA looks to have put in a whole lot of work to make 2004 a really good game, and the previews have been pretty good so far.
And if you are scoring 17 goals vs. the Wings in NHL 2003, maybe you should turn up the difficulty a notch? There are 4 difficulty levels, and within each you can give goalie advantages and skater advantages to either team.
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I'm betting these are NPD TRSTS reports, pretty much the only source of USA sales data. However, that's not too good, because each company needs to report to them. Heck WAL-MART DOESN'T PARTICIPATE, so all of you buying at Wal-Mart aren't adding to any tracking numbers, and would it be too bold to say a large portion of Cubes would be bought there?
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It is strange to read about the PS2 version of anything (other than Mystic Heroes, online games, and movie-cutscene-fests) being better than the GameCube version. We must be playing different games from publishers of varying quality, because I'm sure the reasons can't be technical; to me it shows that publishers should be paying more attention to their QA when it comes to their GameCube titles. People who play Nintendo games are the ones who can recognize and appreciate a well-designed game better than anyone. (It's not a case of being better per se, it's just that it's a skill that comes with the experience of playing high-quality games, that's all.)
When it comes to multi-platform games, I've always bought the GameCube version over the PS2 version, because of the better controller, improved graphics, and the reduced load times. The multi-platform Namco games in particular (Pac Man World 2, Dead to Rights, Soul Calibur 2, etc.) look and play MUCH better on my Cube than on my friend's PS2. (I have a PS2 also, but I always buy the GameCube versions instead because they are noticeably and consistently better.)
I guess I just don't buy it when people say that the only reason to own a Nintendo system is to play Nintendo's games. Sure, I consider Nintendo's games to be the best, most polished games in the world, but that doesn't mean I'm hurting for 3rd party titles. There have been/are/will be enough 3rd-party exclusives (games, or features in multi-platform games%2rue; the GameCube to make it a justified purchase.
How many is negligible? 5, 50, maybe 500? Maybe 10,000? 10k wouldn't be too bad at all. I guess if it was say, 50, that would be bad. And to think that Sega's football would sell even less copies, it makes sense that Sega pulled it's games off Gamecube. That in itself if a major shame though because Sega's NHL 2k3 on Gamecube is the greatest hockey game ever. Word is, Sega only sold one copy of that game...and it was to me.