Madden Sales Down 18% Y-o-Y in October

[Demoncrom]

Madden has been a just ok game for at least 5 years. Very few people I know care to play the game past the initial release month. The concepts within have begun to stale. Sad fact is - this is exactly what happens when there is no competition in the market. People want fresh and exciting and MAdden is not much of either. Don't get me wrong - this year game has it's fine points, but the problem is we can only compare it to the lackluster NFL games that EA has produced over the years.

[BlingBling19]

Madden just isn't all that fun anymore. It seems to be the same game every single year with perhaps a tiny change here or there. The strides other sports titles are making make madden look like a joke.

[KingV2k3]

They lost me (so far, anyway) b/c the focus has been "new" features rather than sim gameplay and prefected sim stat engine / franchise mode...

They need (IMHO) to factor in the human vs. CPU offline franchise player as well as the other target demos for this title...

[DJDReW3102]

this game is unimpressive because there are no new features or attractions to keep things fresh or whatnot. A stale game = stale sales.

[Knight165]

This is not an "I told you so" ....but this certainly makes me think back to the thread that had to do with EA stock(perhaps?)...and their bottom line. I remember the talk surrounding the license and it's effects on what Madden actually went from to what I knew it was coming to and that was a cash cow into somewhat of an albatross. You can focus on sales numbers all you want, but the NFL in it's own greed(although I wonder how much the giant EA pushed the NFL into an exclusive)....really screwed EA in "forcing" them(it was one or the other...EA or T2) to buy this license for an obscene amount of money. EA was losing money on it's bottom line(not from Madden itself...but the clear Madden money allowed them to lose money in other areas and absorb that loss...once the license gobbled that money up...the wiggle room for EA dried up) and it was a direct result of that yearly nut. They(EA) actually did a "good" job of hiding that money from it's prospectus pages...as I tried in vain to find those monies on the debit side to no avail.(I actually considered EA a good investment at one time!)
Truth be told...it's not one thing that's making this happen...it's a cumulative thing IMO.
Some, the license fee(and driving this title to be "the flagship" year after year....where instead of steady little improvements, the devs were forced to come up with the next big thing...and the suits breathing down their necks the whole time)...some bad economy....some poor choices in design and yes....some apathy from the user base.
I'm truly interested to see what happens when this and the baseball licenses are up. Will anyone feel forced to bit the bullet again or will the respective leagues see that their immense greed with the exclusive license(as opposed to a fee for any company willing to jump in the ring)?
Should be interesting.

M.K.
Knight165

[TWood2K7]

We will never get a good F****ing Football game from EA Until they have real legit competition. Point Blank

[EnglishGamer]

Not surprising at all!

[SteeperCheck]

I can see this coming....