Sega Goes Cheap to Battle EA in NFL Game Sales?

An anonymous reader writes "According to as yet unconfirmed reports on DealRush.com, Sega is going full force at EA's football market share by slashing their football game's price by 60% and only asking $19.99 this upcoming year, instead of the usual $49.99. EA, the current market leader in football games, outsells Sega's title, year after year, by a wide margin. This year Sega may have adopted a new strategy to hook them with price, and follow through with quality in an effort to increase sales. EA has yet to respond. ESPN NFL ships in August for Playstation 2 and Xbox. [A GameSpot report has a Visual Concepts spokesperson indicating there will be 'big announcements regarding the game soon', but there's no official word.]"

Comments

This will probably...

[schild]

This will probably work and Sega will prove you can make bank and charge considerably less than the going rate for a game. After they rake in the beans from their mass quantity of sales the industry will go "[the sheep] are still willing to pay $50" and not change anything. Way to go Sega, keep fighting the good fight to stay afloat!

Re:This will probably...

[PTBNL]

Well, nobody has to.

In all of the sports games I play, though, I enjoy playing with current rosters, and most sports games don't offer roster updates beyond the season they're released for obvious reasons.

so great

[meatbridge]

i think it's amazing that competition is helping lower prices. video games have been really expensive for a long while. unfortunately i don't play sports titles.

I generally only buy one...

[Ummagumma]

...which is always Madden. I know the quality will be good, and know the gameplay. I bought NFL2k a few years ago, and while good, I still preferred Madden.

At the $20 price point, I will still purchase Madden, but now will ALSO purchase ESPN NFL, to see how I like it. At the $50 price point, I never would have tried this.

Kudos to Sega, for giving me a chance at their game!

my thoughts

[musikit]

heard about this yesterday and thought it was a great thing

eventually EA will cut prices on football games to $20 to combat this and plays will ask "well how come all sports game can't be $20?" then all sports games will have to be cut to $20. eventually people will go "well if sports games are $20 why can't all games be $20?" and then the world will be a better place. for you, and me. just wait and see.

Possible Backfire but Great Idea

[the_riaa]

This could work great for Sega, but there's a pretty high potential for backlash. Sure, they'll sell a lot more copies - but Sega's market share in the football game market is what, maybe 15% as of now? They'll sell more copies, but at less than half the amount they used to make - that's a nice hit to their profit margins. No matter if Sega's ESPN games are of better quality than Madden, they don't have EA's hype and marketing machine [and tradition]. Some better advertising plus this rediculously affordable price, and they really could gain some ground, even if only for a year. For the record, I bought NFL2K the day it came out for Dreamcast, and I'm a huge fan of the ESPN NFL games - up to the point where they dropped support for my Gamecube [jerks!]. I guess I'll have to play them on Xbox now.

Speaking of Xbox, that's really where these games stood above Madden, with the Xbox live play - with EA jumping onto Xbox Live next year, forget that advantage.

But at $19.99? Hell, I'd buy copies for my cross-country friends just so I can whoop their asses on Xbox Live. If Sega does this with their other sports games, their very-excellent NBA and NHL games could catch fire. The ESPN presentation elements is fantastic.