On Monday, I posted "PS3 vs. Xbox 360 - Madden NFL 11 August 2010 Sales Ranks". Being that I already discussed the PS3 and Xbox 360 sales ranks in that post, this post will cover mainly the Wii version of Madden NFL 11.
I left Madden NFL 11 Wii's sales ranks out of the original chart, because I thought it was difficult to see small differences in sales ranks between the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions(plus the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions had the same MSRP), when the Wii version was included. With this post, I am including the Wii version's sales ranks in the same chart I used for the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of Madden NFL 11.
Madden NFL 11 for the Wii was released on August 10, 2010; the same day the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions were released, but with a MSRP of $49.99, instead of $59.99.
Was Madden NFL 11 on the Wii close to the sales ranks of the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of Madden NFL 11? Let's take a look:
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| Click graph to enlarge |
The chart above shows the August 2010 sales ranks for Madden NFL 11 on the PS3, Wii, and Xbox 360. Sales ranks were captured between August 2 and August 31, 2010.
Highs & Lows:
The highest recorded sale rank for Madden NFL 11 on the Wii was #43, on August 8 and August 9.
The lowest recorded sale rank for Madden NFL 11 on the Wii was #146, on August 2 around 11:30PM.
On the PS3, the highest recorded sale rank for Madden NFL 11 was #1, while the lowest sale rank was #30. For the Xbox 360, the highest recorded sale rank was #2, the lowest recorded sale rank was #23.
Critical Reception:
The Wii version of Madden NFL 11 had reviews start being published around August 9, just like the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions. The big difference with the Wii version's review score average though, is the number of "professional" reviews it has.
Madden NFL 11 on the Wii has a 76.50% review score average, based on just 6 "professional" reviews on GameRankings.com.
The PS3 version had 21 reviews on Monday, and the Xbox 360 version had 26 reviews for its average on Monday.
Here's how the Wii version has faired from Amazon.com customer review scores:
Thoughts:
Madden NFL 10 on the Wii was reported to have sold 66,000 copies its first month; compared to 928,000 copies for Madden NFL 10 on the Xbox 360, and 665,000 copies on the PS3.
The August 2010 NPD data was released today, and Madden NFL 11 sold 920,800 copies on the Xbox 360 and 893,600 copies on the PS3.
The Wii version of Madden NFL 11 didn't make the NPD's "Top 10" for August, and it appears to have sold less than 100,000 copies, from the initial sales numbers in the NPD data. Perhaps in the next few days we will learn just how many copies were sold of the Wii version.
If you are interested in Madden NFL 11 on either the PS3, Wii, or Xbox 360, you can see prices for them on Amazon.com listed below:
Interesting numbers - and not too shocking to me really I guess. I mean, I have all 3 of the major consoles. I pick it up for the 360 because I have more friends on Xbox live than PS3 as a rule. But I usually choose between those two - I'll be honest, I never really consider it for the Wii. The graphics engine doesn't perform as well and it doesn't seem to get as much critical love from the 'professional' sites. Generally, from what I have seen, the EA games fare better score-wise on the 360/ps3 than the Wii - NHL, NFL, NBA - the exception to that rule is usually Tiger Woods Golf, which gets marked down for graphics but marked up for how well the Wii remote translates into a golf swing on the tv.
ReplyDeleteGot a question for you though. I commented briefly on your other article about it - but what do you guys think of EA's sports pass to get online with the game, ensuring that you buy it new? I'll be honest and say that I understand why they do it - they make no money off of the used game market, so this helps to ensure they get a bigger cut of profits. But does the policy annoy any of you or not? I'm a big used game buyer, so this trend ruffles my feathers, but I see a very diverse set of responses on the IGN and Gamespot forums.
Huh. I don't guess I realized just how low the sales were for the Wii version of the series all this time. I guess I just appreciate that they still make them, and try to make them unique on Wii.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to see the PS3 finally competing with the 360 when it comes to multiplatform games. But what's even more interesting is that sales for the 360 are flat, which means that people with both consoles aren't migrating from one to the other.
ReplyDelete@Chalgyr
Saying that companies don't see money from the used game market isn't exactly true, especially when it comes to Gamestop. When people trade in a game, they get credit which allows them to buy the latest game. You take that out and suddenly you have less people buying new games. I would even argue that Gamestop makes things even better for the industry since it keeps the money for games, turning it into a somewhat controlled market instead of a free market. Obviously companies don't get a cut from used copies sold, but that doesn't mean they don't get money from the used market. I think it's pretty clear that they in fact do.
I think the EA pass is a stupid idea, but if consumers are willing to pay for it, they will, otherwise, they won't and they'll be wary of their next game purchase.
But I think the biggest mistake to make is to not realize how much this can hurt costumers and future sales. When someone isn't happy with a game purchase, it can take a long time before buying another one, which damages the entire market.
For example, I tend to buy a couple PC games when I get a new computer about every four years. Last year, I was thinking of buying a couple games. One of them was Prince of Persia, but I didn't buy it because the game detects if you have Daemon Tools installed. I love how supposed anti piracy measures actually meant a lost sale in my case.
The first game I bought was Mirror's Edge and I liked it a lot, no problem there. The second game I bought was Need For Speed Undercover. I knew the game wasn't well received but I wanted a racing game and I've been a fan of NFS since the beginning. More importantly though, it was 20$. But that game has left me with a bad taste. Considering the performance of my computer, the game runs like crap, even at the lowest resolution and with everything off. NFS was born on PC and now we get console ports. Not only that, sometimes we get crappy ports. The point of this is that I didn't buy NFS: Shift because of that. Even if the demo ran smoother than Undercover. I do not want to repeat the experience, especially since GRID ran so well (and is the better game too).
So that EA pass is like that. It can mean a big loss in trust from the consumers, which can affect the market within a year and keep going even in the long run. Some people stopped playing games when they stopped making 2d Mario games. That affected mostly Nintendo (while Sony was getting new costumers) until they came up with Wii Sports. That's a really long time!
Publishers are really starting to play with fire this generation. Things could get ugly.
I heard about the Prince of Persia mess. There's been a lot more talk about companies trying what EA did with this Sports Pass. THQ apparently did it for their MMA title and Sony's talking about doing it with their 1st party titles that have online play. One PS3 game my son and I both liked was White Knight Chronicles and a few months ago they announced #2 would have a online pass type of code as well for the online aspects, and that it's one per account, not system, so for my son to play it online he'd have to shell out another $10-$15, so I completely agree with you about angering people as well.
ReplyDeleteI can see your point about trading in toward new games, and Gamestop in particular has done a good job of trying to capitalize on that of late. I get their weekly newsletters and they've really scaled back on the weekly coupons they used to include over the last couple of years, and now if there is one, it's almost always something like: extra 25% trade-in value on your used games if you put it toward the upcoming Madden 11 release, etc.
However, I know myself, I almost always turn used games into more used games - I get more mileage out of it. ;) And from a company like EA's standpoint, they probably feel like their plan is 'working' because people have incentive to buy their game new as opposed to used, but maybe not some other game now because of this pass.
There's a couple of IGN articles about the sports pass here:
http://ps3.ign.com/articles/111/1110231p1.html
and
http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/108/1088888p1.html
I hate the thing, so I'm curious to see if it has any effects on sales that can be discerned. As for the PS3 gaining ground, maybe the online is exactly why? My son and I can both play online games for free on a PS3 - but on the 360 you need to have a pair of gold accounts. Not sure if that's a big factor or not, but it could be.
Wow, I had not heard about White Knight Chronicles doing that not only for systems, but for profiles/accounts too. That's more than ridiculous. First we used to have multiple save points, now we have one save per profile and then they want to make us pay extra for multiple users? If that's not going backwards, I don't know what is.
ReplyDeleteStarcraft allowed you to create as many profiles as you wanted. In SC2, I have to play on my brother's profile (he bought the game). I'm not even going to go online to screw up his stats. People don't realize it, but profile based gaming is another step towards cloud gaming and we can already see why it's not a good idea.
It makes me so happy to have a Wii. People don't see why its "limitations" are actually a good thing most of the time.
I don't think the EA pass will have much of an effect on sports games. They have poor resale value once the next iteration is out and people that buy them used a year or two later probably don't plan on playing them online. It would be hard to find players online anyway.
White Knight would be a better test, but I don't remember the first one selling that much. The best test game would be a mainstream game where the online portion is important. Otherwise I don't think we'll ever see something significant. Outside of a few games, most people don't play online except maybe to try it and they'll happily skip it if they have to pay.
Trading in games to buy used game is definitely the smart way to go about it, but it's like thermodynamics, you can't make a perpetual machine. With a lot of games, you can get many games, with many games you can get a few, and with a few you can get one. Then you have to start the cycle again by buying games new.
The other thing most people don't tend to see, is the amount of money Gamestop loses over used games they can't sell. While they will sell a used version of a recent game at 45$, if that game isn't sold, they will have to lower the price and maybe 4 years later it'll still be on shelves and they won't make a profit on it. I don't know what the PS2 collection looks like where you go, but at the three EB Games near my place, it's pretty big and it looks like it hasn't changed in the last two years. I don't know what they'll do with them when the next generation hits, but they won't have space for it anymore. That's going to turn into a loss for Gamestop and a win for publishers, because Gamestop will have sold games that they bought from the publisher, but will lose on the credit because it's not being paid back.
@Chalgyr:
ReplyDelete"Got a question for you though. I commented briefly on your other article about it - but what do you guys think of EA's sports pass to get online with the game, ensuring that you buy it new?"
I did answer it just a few minutes ago on the other post as well, and I said, "I'm not really sure how their online pass will or won't affect sales. I really think GameStop will have a solution to it, by higher trade percentage, or just giving less money for Madden NFL 11 trade-ins, and then being able to sell the used for less.
I think it's really interesting that THQ was the first company to implement the online pass system, and even more interesting how quickly EA followed in their steps.
Really though, are people that are purchasing last year's version of Madden used worried with playing online? Probably not, so it could backfire on EA and THQ, with gamers just sitting on the sidelines(haha) and waiting for each new year's version, to buy the previous year's version at a cheaper used price."
Kind of interesting Jonath and I were thinking the same thing about past Madden versions and online not mattering much.
@WesFX:
Yea, the PS2 version is still selling better than the Wii version for the launch month; I find that absolutely crazy and just hard to imagine how they aren't targeting the Wii audience correctly...or something!
@Jonath:
Yea, the PS3's large increase from last year to this year's version was very interesting. Next year may even be more interesting, if we see the PS3 version pass the Xbox 360 version.
Also, I own Mirror's Edge on the PS3, and I enjoyed it, and I hope they make a sequel for it(like has been rumored for a while now), with some slight improvements to the running system.
Mrs. CwG(my wife) even did a voice-over for me in a video I edited for a Mirror's Edge contest last year, before I even owned the game or my PS3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHcpggRqTvc
"Publishers are really starting to play with fire this generation. Things could get ugly."
Yea, if they make quality games, they really don't have to worry about used sales much...
@Chalgyr:
I did hear the PS3 version of Madden NFL 11 was advertised more, or at least the PS3 had more coverage in the commercials for the game. Don't know if that is true or not, as I haven't seen any commercials this year for it.
@Jonath:
"I don't think the EA pass will have much of an effect on sports games. They have poor resale value once the next iteration is out and people that buy them used a year or two later probably don't plan on playing them online. It would be hard to find players online anyway."
I said basically this exact thing in the other post, we were probably typing at the same time!
If people are buying used games, it would be interesting to know if they are buying this year's version used, or last year's version and saving $20-$30.
Thanks for the awesome conversation going on here! I'm glad to see the article was interesting to some people in some way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mp-1g-rsjYM
ReplyDeleteInteresting, I don't see a version for 360. That might explain things.
As for a Mirror's Edge sequel, I think EA might be stuck with the lawsuits over the Edge word. That's too bad. I hope they crush the guy.
@Jonath:
ReplyDelete"As for a Mirror's Edge sequel, I think EA might be stuck with the lawsuits over the Edge word. That's too bad. I hope they crush the guy."
That would explain why their hasn't been any news really I guess! I was wondering, because most companies put out sequels now, within 2 years of release of the original games.
Thanks for the feedback on that!