ESPN NFL sells 3/4 million units in 10 days. Visual Concepts finally gets some freaking love! The real test will be how it stands up to Madden this month, though.
Another company that increased its market share was Take-Two. The choice to release its football game earlier than EA’s Madden–and at a reduced price of $20–paid off handsomely. The sports game reportedly sold 792,000 units in July. Tony Gikas of Piper Jaffray noted, “In our opinion, the incredible strength of ESPN Football 2K5 is surprising and will likely cut into Madden Football 2005 sales at some level.”
ESPN is also just as good if not better than Madden. I would be very surprised if that $20 price point saw the light of day next year, though. That was a one-time stunt to lure in Madden fans.
Like extrabags, I would also like to see lower priced games and I have to agree with Sanjuro that more general price drops mirroring ESPN’s are unlikely other than one-off attempts to lure players from the competition. However, IDG Entertainment’s 2004 survey appears to show that publishers are feeling the pinch from the used game market at the $50 price point. Who knows what might happen as a result? Nothing major probably, but one can hope!
Execs also noted the negative impact of the increasing popularity of sales of used games, pointing out that this has led to a shrinking of the “window” in which brand-new games can be sold at the full price of $49.99. The money-making opportunities of the future, says the report, are in direct online distribution of games and in a more serious approach to growing global markets like China.
I think the $20 price point might get some traction on sports games where yearly releases tend to look more like just a roster update. If Sega only rebuilds it’s core game engine every three-four years and just does content updates and tweaking to the rest of the game, they could make more money with casual gamers buying each installment, whereas non-hardcore Madden maybe buy Madden much less frequently.
Before finding Madden '02 for $5 while picking up ESPN NFL 2k5, the last Madden I had bought was '93 for the Genesis. At $20, I could see myself buying the franchise every year, just to be current with the online gamers. At $50, there’s no way in hell I’m buying Madden. (Of course, that really more ties into this than any sort of anti-Madden bias.)
Of course, maybe it is a one-time lure. In that case, ESPN NFL 2k5 will have to last me a while.
ESPN may be better Off-line, but for those of us who STILL can’t play online the jury is still out. I haven’t picked up Madden yet in the hopes that the ESPN crew will get their shit together and actually patch the game so some of us can play online.
$20 on a brand new console game means the publisher is losing money. This is an act of desperation to try to get any market share they can. Shit, Madden presold more copies than ESPN has sold, total.
Yeah, but it’s not a whole brand new game, it’s a tweaked NFL 2k4, which itself was a tweaked NFL 2k3, which was a…I don’t know, when did Sega do their last major engine upgrade? Come on, each ititeration of these games aren’t multi-year development cycle masterpieces. But where I might buy NFL 2k5, 2k6, 2k7, etc… at $20/pop, I wouldn’t buy Zelda 2k5, 2k6, 2k7, etc… at $50/pop (esp. if they were all basically the same game).
Yeah, but it’s not a whole brand new game, it’s a tweaked NFL 2k4, which itself was a tweaked NFL 2k3, which was a…I don’t know, when did Sega do their last major engine upgrade? Come on, each ititeration of these games aren’t multi-year development cycle masterpieces. But where I might buy NFL 2k5, 2k6, 2k7, etc… at $20/pop, I wouldn’t buy Zelda 2k5, 2k6, 2k7, etc… at $50/pop (esp. if they were all basically the same game).[/quote]
But how much of the development cost is licensing logos, likenesses, etc from the NFL? And at $20, almost a 3rd of your profit is already going towards paying royalties to the console maker, isn’t it?
And there it is. Madden sells 1.35 mil in its first week, a large part of which is probably presales. Biggest first week in Madden history. Well, at least ESPN is on the charts this time around. I don’t think they managed top 10 last year…
