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EA Predicted to Announce Madden, NHL Sales Drops
bippy writes "Analyst PJ McNealy predicts that EA will announce Tuesday a 20 percent drop in sales for Madden and a 50 percent drop in sales for NHL 2005, partly due to the success of ESPN's low-price, high-content games. McNealy says this likely won't have a huge financial impact on the game developer, but it will affect them psychologically. I'm just surprised that ESPN's price cut worked. It seems that when Madden came out everyone was saying that the price cut wouldn't help ESPN or hurt EA."
There's no NHL season this year. I've bought the EA NHL game for years... but not this year. Why? Not because I bought a different game, but because I'm just not interested in playing a hockey video game when there's no hockey season.
MORTAR COMBAT!
The Madden vs. ESPN fanboy war had just died down, the remnants taking refuge in the teenage spam havens of IGN boards and the like. Now comes word that the ESPN Games price cuts worked, and out come the fanboy trolls to take up the fight with renewed fervor. God help us.
Maybe some people decided they were tired of buying the same game over and over again every year. I mean seriously. NHL and Madden are great sports games. Probably the best sports games ever (discounting 10 yard fight and Ice Hockey for the NES). But NHL '99 is every bit just as good as NHL 2k4 or 2k5. If you don't have it yet, buy the newest one. But if you've already got an NHL game or a madden game, there is no reason to buy a newer one.
So maybe a few of the dummies who rebuy the game every year finally realized the dumbness and decied to spend less money and try a game that might actually be a little bit different.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Come on guys, could we get it right? It's EA that will be announcing that their games are losing sales. ESPN is the one causing the loss in sales.
How am I supposed to try and maybe buy Madden 2005 if EA decided not to release a demo for it this year?
There's also the issue of the bugs in Madden that were causing people to "exploit" the stamina features in Online games.
I personally just think EA has taken their mindshare for granted. SegaSports gave them a run for the money, and now it seems ESPN has broken through.
I bought ESPN Football for 9.95$ (on sale) because it was so cheap. However with the low-cost game comes with many issues primarily the game freezes. I have read similiar complaints on the ESPN message board.
Would I spend the extra money on Madden? Yes because the game doesnt crash.
I don't think I will be buying any more ESPN games til they improve their QA process.
-- ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space!
Was because it was right at the high end of the "impulse buy" range. Most people will spend up to $20(one bill, well more than that with tax but people don't really think of that) on a whim, but when you start to get higher than that, many people will think twice about it, and probably go with madden because it's a $50 game, so it must be better than your $30 or $40 game...
Monstar L
From August sales data and EA's own admission this was one of the better years for Madden from launch to August. It hit 1 million sales faster than last year, and was selling even more units than ESPN Football through August. Unless September was a total disaster this analyst missed the boat.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
I'm getting tired of the whole EA vs ESPN debate because only one of the two companies releases games on the only platform that matters -- PC. And that company is EA. Until the ESPN line is released for PC, they aren't even a true direct competitor to EA, who has released games for PC for years and years. If you're missing an entire platform, you're a niche, not a competitor.
Also, I don't know about you but I haven't bought many games of any type lately, for any platform. Why? Because the economy still blows and I have other things to spend money on that are more-important than dropping $50 on some game.
Perhaps that amazingly-obvious factor has a lot to do with it EA's numbers being down -- nobody has as much money to waste on games right now.
-- Primis.
a price point has been identified? Is anyone at Madden listening? Hello? Oh, people haven't mentioned it but ESPN football is NOT available for the PC.
B O R I N G
It could be that in a relatively weak economy with relatively high unemployment, that price matters more. This would difinitely give the ESPN line of games an edge. And, as some have already mentioned, $19.99 is at the sweet spot of the typical impulse buy. Now that we're entering the holiday shopping season, sales should go up for both EA and ESPN lines, but I'm guessing that grandparents will be preferentially buying the ESPN line of games for their spoiled grandkids!
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
I purchased NBA 2k5, also because of the price cut. I got used to the controls somewhat , and only noticed some graphical glitches. So things were pretty much all well and good until last week, when my 24/7 mode games would freeze whenever I finished a game/trial. Once I completed a game, The "Loading..." text would come up, and then the "..." animation froze, and the music would start doing a 5 second loop.
Thinking maybe it was a bad music track, I found the surface of the disc had no scratches of any kind. However, I was still suspicious of the music thing (as games I have had before would freeze because of bad tracks of music), so I tried to shut the music off. But since I can't do that from inside the 24/7 mode, and also shutting it off before entering the mode doesn't help (if you originally created the 24/7 savegame with the music on, you're stuck), I just started a new 24/7 character with no music. I lost basically 6 hours of gameplay. And now it works. grr
This might not be the true solution, but I'm done with 24/7 mode and the game, (I'm not going to play 82 games) so whatever. In any case, I started to hate the AI after awhile. I couldn't figure out a way to drive, jump to shoot, and then directpass to a specific player. I vaugely remeber the EA version being a little more intuative in its passing, whereas 2k5 tends to pass to people that are not necessarilally where you are pushing the controls. This makes fast breaks annoying and difficult (You have to press the alley-oop button to pass to the trailers on te break; It's not like EA where I would simply hold shoot, getting defenders to commit, and then hitting pass to pass to the cutters) Grr!
0- Eamonman Proud member of DNRC
Some EA reps were recruiting in my area not too long ago, and the head of research (his name escapes me, but he was really cool guy) gave a speech. He explained to us that for sports games, they try to get the bulk of their revenues in the bag during the first 6 weeks of the respective sport's season. In NHL 2005's case, he explained that EA was already expecting that 2005 would not do well because nobody was psyched for the season with the strike, and hence nobody would be psyched to buy the game. Especially telling was the 25 minutes of EA game trailers before the speech with trailers for every EA Sports game, except NHL 2005.
Significant excerpt (emphasis mine):
"Despite disappointing the Street, EA officials touted the company's success in the quarter. The company's Madden NFL 2005 title has posted double-digit growth in units and revenue over last year despite competition from ESPN NFL 2K5, which is co-published by Sega and Take-Two Interactive, said company CFO Warren Jenson."
In case anyone didn't notice, hockey fans aren't doing anything to support the NHL because there's no season. I'm sure that if you go back and look at sales figures for MLB and NHL games the last time they were on strike/locked out, you'd see a drop in sales for that year, too.
No TiVo and no caffeine make me something something...
Maybe some people decided they were tired of buying the same game over and over again every year. I mean seriously. NHL and Madden are great sports games. Probably the best sports games ever
:)
Overall, maybe. For their time they are average. They don't break new ground with graphics or content like some old NES games did when they had to make up for not having a licence.
(discounting 10 yard fight and Ice Hockey for the NES).
I'd take Blades of Steel and Tecmo bowl but ok.
But NHL '99 is every bit just as good as NHL 2k4 or 2k5. If you don't have it yet, buy the newest one. But if you've already got an NHL game or a madden game, there is no reason to buy a newer one.
I don't play the NHL games anymore, as my interest in hockey has went down the tubes as my team has. I buy Madden every year. Madden usually adds a new feature every year (like it or not). This year they added the hit stick, and a "storyline" type mode where you can read about your team in the local and national papers everyday and listen to sports radio based on the simulated season. It's not super in depth but it's a pretty cool feature I've always thought the football games should have.
First, Madden 2005 is still a huge seller. A small hit was expected due to ESPN's great offering at a low price, and it happened.
I expected a big hit in NHL 2005, for two reasons: the lockout, and the fact that ESPN's hockey keeps improving more than EA's does. I haven't seen this year's offering yet, but I and lots of other people keep saying every year, "man, EA NHL sucks. Next year I am switching." And the $20 price point made it a perfect time to do it.