People often think that sports, and specifically football, embodies the "spirit of America" but when it comes to the NFL, it's more accurate than most people know. After all, on top of the pageantry and show, things really come down to money. The NFL is a well-oiled business transaction, with sales of merchandise, lucrative TV contracts, and yes, their exclusive video game in Madden NFL.
EA holds up their end of the bargain as well, putting out a product that millions of people buy annually. Amazingly, despite accusations of minimal yearly changes, the game sells more and more copies every successive incarnation. It's what's helped Madden become the juggernaut it is since first being introduced 20 years ago. We take a look at Madden NFL 09 and its notable success.
The economy might be down, but Madden is up!
According to the NPD, five SKUs of Madden 09 were among the top 20 titles for the August period. The game held down the top three slots for the month, and was the top selling title for four of the systems it was available for.
The 360 version led the way with 1 million sold, followed by the PS3 version with 643,000 and the PS2 version with 424,500. The Wii version of the game was in ninth place with 115,800 copies sold [Owned by Too Human? - Ed.]. These four versions of the game sold nearly 2.2 million copies during August.
It was worrisome to some analysts that this year's version of Madden had 30 percent fewer pre-orders than last year's version. However, sales year-on-year for Madden were flat on day one and later reported as up six percent, which is obviously good for EA since the game generates over 20 percent of the company's yearly revenue.
"We believe EA elected to disclose Madden sales [prior to NPD] as there was some lingering concern among investors over lower preorder volumes," commented Lazard Capital Markets' Colin Sebastian. "However, it is important to note that street-dated titles with mass-market appeal are less likely to receive pre-orders than core gamer titles (e.g., Halo and GTA). We also note that Madden sales grew this year despite a significant decline in prior-generation PS2 software, which is historically a very strong platform for EA Sports titles."
System for system, sales were slightly up on the Xbox 360 and mostly flat for the Wii. The PS2 version saw a decrease of roughly 200,000, but the PS3 version's sales doubled with an increase of over 300,000. This lends some credibility to the claims that many PS2 owners are making the PS3 their next system.
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