With more than 56 million units sold worldwide and all the incredible success Nintendo has had with the Wii, the platform still poses a bit of a conundrum for the industry as a whole. Third parties can't ignore its massive installed base, but at the same time, it's clearly Nintendo that dominates the software charts. Companies that have invested heavily in the Wii, like EA and Ubisoft, have both talked about Wii weakness bringing down their earnings of late. Meanwhile analysts and developers are talking about the Wii bubble possibly deflating now, as substandard software floods the platform.
It's absolutely mind boggling that three years into the lifecycle of the Wii publishers still are seemingly in experimentation mode; they just can't figure it out. IndustryGamers had a chance to speak with EA CEO John Riccitiello on the phone today, and since he complained of Wii weakness just a few weeks ago, we decided to pick his brain on the subject.
Riccitiello began by clarifying his position on the Wii. Ultimately, he's still happy with his company's success on the platform. “I'm not as negative on it [as you might think], but I tend to be a little less sugar coated in our earnings calls, so if you stack up my language against some of our competitors' CEOs it can come across that way because I did tell people that the Wii business was coming in below expectations. But let's be realistic about what really happened for EA on Wii this year. Our year-to-date Wii revenues have doubled versus last year; we have a 19% share. I don't think any third party publisher has a share higher than that on any platform... I'd have to double check that; we're in the 20s on 360/PS3 and Activision may be up there on one of those platforms. But Wii is a very successful third-party platform for EA," he said.
He then defended EA's own Wii failures, noting that publishers (EA included) are still figuring the system out. "I think it's also fair to say that people are still grappling with it. I think Dead Space Extraction was one of the best pieces of software built on the platform and it did not perform well. It's a strong IP but for some reason it did not resonate in a way that brought consumers to the store to buy it. And Madden hasn't performed to my expectations so far this year, even though it's a fabulous piece of software. EA Sports Active and our Hasbro stuff have done really, really well. So you start to create a certain perception in your mind of the type of consumer that works on the Wii, that's a little different, doesn't have the core gamer in mind, etc. But there are an awful lot of core gamers that have this platform and there are oftentimes some surprising breakthroughs that feel pretty core."
He added, "I think the Wii is confounding to people because it's so darn big and successful. Even this year, what most people perceive as a down year, they're going to sell just in the Western markets somewhere in the mid-teens of millions of hardware units, which is a blow-away success for a console. And yet it's lower than they (and we) originally thought. But that's a little bit like saying they won the Super Bowl by a smaller point spread."
The bottom line would appear to be that catering to and marketing to that Wii audience is going to remain a challenge for publishers. As Riccitiello points out, this has always been somewhat true for Nintendo consoles, but we think the problem has been exacerbated on the Wii.
Riccitiello continued, "Did I think Dead Space and Madden were going to succeed on the platform? Yes, and I believe to this day that anyone who picks up those products will have a good entertainment experience that's worth more than we charge for. They look great, they play great, and are every bit what a hit should be and they didn't resonate. And I'm very proud of the teams that built them. So I think we have continued learning to do with the way people interact with that piece of hardware, and how you market to that consumer. I think, in general, publishers have had trouble finding sustained success and consistent understanding of what makes a success on Nintendo platforms historically because they're so oriented towards first-party content like Mario and Zelda. So I think the Wii is going to be an evolving picture [for third parties]."
We'll have much more from our Riccitiello interview soon. Stay tuned.
What I don't get is why he's surprised at DSE (nichey niche niche genre) and Madden (successively kicked in the 'nads for every new iteration on the Wii) underperforming. Otherwise he's pretty on the ball.
Pureauthor on
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Brainiac 8Don't call me Shirley...Registered Userregular
While speaking at the Developer Jury Service (a pow-wow for industry figures to discuss current gaming trends and topics), Traveler's Tales founder Jon Burton questioned the prolonged survival of the PSP Go platform, since UMD games can often be purchased new or pre-owned at a lower price than the digital versions compatible with PSP Go. "I own a PSP Go but don't want to buy LittleBigPlanet, for instance, as I can get it 20-percent cheaper on UMD from Amazon and could resell it once I'm finished with it," Burton explained. "But if I download it, I get no discount, and no chance to resell -- how annoying is that?"
According to Burton, PSP Go's all-digital system is more than just a minor inconvenience. He later added, "I'm betting on Sony making PSP Go games much cheaper than the UMD versions, or the PSP Go will die." Oh no! The PSP Go is far too tiny and adorable to die so young. Listen to the man, Sony!
Interesting to hear what John Burton had to say about it.
Not wanting to get back into the digital vs physical media debate, but I'm with him.
Maybe they should have made it so Madden wasn't below the standards of 2003 on Gamecube.
But then again EA couldn't match the visual quality of NFL2K5 on the Xbox with their own Xbox versions
The goal was to give the Madden for the Wii its own unique visual style that better aligned with the demographic of the console. We loved the PS2 / Xbox graphics, and they have served us well for many years. The research we did indicated that most Wii consumers did not want a visual port of a PS2 game, so that led us to explore a style that would be exclusive to the Wii.
Yeah, so let's drop then even below what the PS2 can do
What I don't get is why he's surprised at DSE (nichey niche niche genre) and Madden (successively kicked in the 'nads for every new iteration on the Wii) underperforming. Otherwise he's pretty on the ball.
DSE - because they thought they could pull a Resident Evil Chronicles
Madden - because it's a mainstream game on a mainstream platform
both are high quality games
The problem is that it ignores the reasons for the success of both of these. REUC succeeded because it was attached to one of the world's biggest franchises period. Madden succeeds on other platforms because it appeals to people that are anal about football realism in every respect who see non-HD platform versions as inferior, especially when they are modified to include an everyone-can-play "All Play" mode.
Since I wasn't in the original discussion. Really EA, WTF? You're going to charge everyone doesn't buy the game new 5 dollars for a different skin? To a generation of gamers who can get free porn whenever they want?
How is that an enticement to buy a game new? At least put in some kind of super tank or something.
I like the idea. They're giving something free, but not affecting game play, to encourage people to buy new. For people who don't buy it new, EA might get another $5 that they wouldn't have gotten. This is exactly the type of thing the devs and publishers should be doing - encouragement without gimping. I hope it works out for them.
You or I might not pay anything to see digital titties and we lose nothing. Everyone's happy.
Maybe, but consider the incentive. It's naked women in a videogame. Not only does this alienate some potential audiences (hello women, eldery, parents, general non-horny highschoolers), but it's blatantly sexist. The principle, offering something that doesn't change game play, is in tact, but in this case it's a complete disaster. It perpetuates stereotypes and negative associations on both sides of the fence (male and female), and it does so acting as if it is a privilege for that opportunity.
While speaking at the Developer Jury Service (a pow-wow for industry figures to discuss current gaming trends and topics), Traveler's Tales founder Jon Burton questioned the prolonged survival of the PSP Go platform, since UMD games can often be purchased new or pre-owned at a lower price than the digital versions compatible with PSP Go. "I own a PSP Go but don't want to buy LittleBigPlanet, for instance, as I can get it 20-percent cheaper on UMD from Amazon and could resell it once I'm finished with it," Burton explained. "But if I download it, I get no discount, and no chance to resell -- how annoying is that?"
According to Burton, PSP Go's all-digital system is more than just a minor inconvenience. He later added, "I'm betting on Sony making PSP Go games much cheaper than the UMD versions, or the PSP Go will die." Oh no! The PSP Go is far too tiny and adorable to die so young. Listen to the man, Sony!
Interesting to hear what John Burton had to say about it.
Not wanting to get back into the digital vs physical media debate, but I'm with him.
Or the PSP Go will die? That's almost to suggest that it is alive to begin with! :P I am kidding of course.
Anyway, he's making the same point everyone has made in the past about this sort of thing when it comes to full on retail titles on console/handhelds. Why pay full price digitally when you can buy cheaper for physical and have potential to resell, on a system that you pay less for up front (PSP3k)?
What I don't get is why he's surprised at DSE (nichey niche niche genre) and Madden (successively kicked in the 'nads for every new iteration on the Wii) underperforming. Otherwise he's pretty on the ball.
DSE - because they thought they could pull a Resident Evil Chronicles
Madden - because it's a mainstream game on a mainstream platform
both are high quality games
The problem is that it ignores the reasons for the success of both of these. REUC succeeded because it was attached to one of the world's biggest franchises period. Madden succeeds on other platforms because it appeals to people that are anal about football realism in every respect who see non-HD platform versions as inferior, especially when they are modified to include an everyone-can-play "All Play" mode.
Madden Wii is the red-headed stepsubseries of the Madden franchise. The sheer amount of pointless changes they made and kept making to the series is mindboggling. Gamers just want Madden, EA.
Since I wasn't in the original discussion. Really EA, WTF? You're going to charge everyone doesn't buy the game new 5 dollars for a different skin? To a generation of gamers who can get free porn whenever they want?
How is that an enticement to buy a game new? At least put in some kind of super tank or something.
I like the idea. They're giving something free, but not affecting game play, to encourage people to buy new. For people who don't buy it new, EA might get another $5 that they wouldn't have gotten. This is exactly the type of thing the devs and publishers should be doing - encouragement without gimping. I hope it works out for them.
You or I might not pay anything to see digital titties and we lose nothing. Everyone's happy.
Maybe, but consider the incentive. It's naked women in a videogame. Not only does this alienate some potential audiences (hello women, eldery, parents, general non-horny highschoolers), but it's blatantly sexist. The principle, offering something that doesn't change game play, is in tact, but in this case it's a complete disaster. It perpetuates stereotypes and negative associations on both sides of the fence (male and female), and it does so acting as if it is a privilege for that opportunity.
Plus it perpetuates the negative stereotypes of the videogame industry and of "gamers."
What I don't get is why he's surprised at DSE (nichey niche niche genre) and Madden (successively kicked in the 'nads for every new iteration on the Wii) underperforming. Otherwise he's pretty on the ball.
DSE - because they thought they could pull a Resident Evil Chronicles
Madden - because it's a mainstream game on a mainstream platform
both are high quality games
The problem is that it ignores the reasons for the success of both of these. REUC succeeded because it was attached to one of the world's biggest franchises period. Madden succeeds on other platforms because it appeals to people that are anal about football realism in every respect who see non-HD platform versions as inferior, especially when they are modified to include an everyone-can-play "All Play" mode.
Well, All-Play was optional, wasn't it? That's a good thing to add.
The bad thing is that if people wanted to play football like on the TVs, all the other features didn't match up. I mean come on.
I swear EA's Wii team is just incompetent at this point. This is how you do hair on the Nintendo 64.
Well, All-Play was optional, wasn't it? That's a good thing to add.
It's optional in all the games that it is in. And I agree that it's a good idea.
However, the market for Madden games see it as a bad thing. The poeple that buy Madden every year in droves hate the idea, even if it is optional.
They want their Madden a certain way, and that way includes the best possible and most realistic graphics, and for a multitude of reasons this crowd is not going to want a version that is less ideal in that respect as well as other respects.
Including the new style that you pointed out.
I'm all for style over realism with the Wii and it's limited power, but I think that the new Madden style causes an even greater divergence from the people who buy Madden games.
So why do it?
I think EA is NOT trying to appeal to the traditional Madden crowd but to appeal to a newer, broader potential football fan audience on the Wii . I think they believe that the Wii crowd would be amenable to this new style and the All Play thing. That they can start growing and developign a new kind of Madden user base IN ADDITION to the traditional one. I mean, why keep selling to people that are glued to one type of football game when you can keep that market and expand into another one too?
That's the thinking and it's smart thinking. But I think that most people interested in playing virtual football look to madden, and when they do that, they go with the percieved mainstream "superior product."
With more than 56 million units sold worldwide and all the incredible success Nintendo has had with the Wii, the platform still poses a bit of a conundrum for the industry as a whole. Third parties can't ignore its massive installed base, but at the same time, it's clearly Nintendo that dominates the software charts. Companies that have invested heavily in the Wii, like EA and Ubisoft, have both talked about Wii weakness bringing down their earnings of late. Meanwhile analysts and developers are talking about the Wii bubble possibly deflating now, as substandard software floods the platform.
It's absolutely mind boggling that three years into the lifecycle of the Wii publishers still are seemingly in experimentation mode; they just can't figure it out. IndustryGamers had a chance to speak with EA CEO John Riccitiello on the phone today, and since he complained of Wii weakness just a few weeks ago, we decided to pick his brain on the subject.
Riccitiello began by clarifying his position on the Wii. Ultimately, he's still happy with his company's success on the platform. “I'm not as negative on it [as you might think], but I tend to be a little less sugar coated in our earnings calls, so if you stack up my language against some of our competitors' CEOs it can come across that way because I did tell people that the Wii business was coming in below expectations. But let's be realistic about what really happened for EA on Wii this year. Our year-to-date Wii revenues have doubled versus last year; we have a 19% share. I don't think any third party publisher has a share higher than that on any platform... I'd have to double check that; we're in the 20s on 360/PS3 and Activision may be up there on one of those platforms. But Wii is a very successful third-party platform for EA," he said.
He then defended EA's own Wii failures, noting that publishers (EA included) are still figuring the system out. "I think it's also fair to say that people are still grappling with it. I think Dead Space Extraction was one of the best pieces of software built on the platform and it did not perform well. It's a strong IP but for some reason it did not resonate in a way that brought consumers to the store to buy it. And Madden hasn't performed to my expectations so far this year, even though it's a fabulous piece of software. EA Sports Active and our Hasbro stuff have done really, really well. So you start to create a certain perception in your mind of the type of consumer that works on the Wii, that's a little different, doesn't have the core gamer in mind, etc. But there are an awful lot of core gamers that have this platform and there are oftentimes some surprising breakthroughs that feel pretty core."
He added, "I think the Wii is confounding to people because it's so darn big and successful. Even this year, what most people perceive as a down year, they're going to sell just in the Western markets somewhere in the mid-teens of millions of hardware units, which is a blow-away success for a console. And yet it's lower than they (and we) originally thought. But that's a little bit like saying they won the Super Bowl by a smaller point spread."
The bottom line would appear to be that catering to and marketing to that Wii audience is going to remain a challenge for publishers. As Riccitiello points out, this has always been somewhat true for Nintendo consoles, but we think the problem has been exacerbated on the Wii.
Riccitiello continued, "Did I think Dead Space and Madden were going to succeed on the platform? Yes, and I believe to this day that anyone who picks up those products will have a good entertainment experience that's worth more than we charge for. They look great, they play great, and are every bit what a hit should be and they didn't resonate. And I'm very proud of the teams that built them. So I think we have continued learning to do with the way people interact with that piece of hardware, and how you market to that consumer. I think, in general, publishers have had trouble finding sustained success and consistent understanding of what makes a success on Nintendo platforms historically because they're so oriented towards first-party content like Mario and Zelda. So I think the Wii is going to be an evolving picture [for third parties]."
We'll have much more from our Riccitiello interview soon. Stay tuned.
That Super Bowl analogy is fucking grand and spot on.
But bring back the BIG label. I mean come on, EA just basically ported the Wii version of Madden to the 360 and called it Madden NFL Arcade. Even they are saying that the Wii version is the "lite edition".
Also, all those hundreds of thousands of people each year that were buying PS2 Madden over Xbox/Cube madden even though they looked better apparently didn't care about the graphics looking like a PS2 game.
Madden needs to stay simulation, and they need to actually put effort behind the Wii version to match what Sega did in 2004 on vastly inferior hardware. To appeal to new people, bring NFL Arcade to WiiWare or a disc edition, under the BIG label. You sell both to the simulation crowd and the people that just want to play quick games of easy-to-play football. I mean I found Arcade fun to play, didn't buy it, but it would sell GREAT to people that stopped playing football games after the NES/SNES versions.
Madden needs to stay simulation, and they need to actually put effort behind the Wii version to match what Sega did in 2004 on vastly inferior hardware. To appeal to new people, bring NFL Arcade to WiiWare or a disc edition, under the BIG label. You sell both to the simulation crowd and the people that just want to play quick games of easy-to-play football. I mean I found Arcade fun to play, didn't buy it, but it would sell GREAT to people that stopped playing football games after the NES/SNES versions.
I have never seen a sports game fan that has done that.
korodullin on
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Fuck, the controls started getting too complicated for me. I stopped buying NCAA after 05.
There's a lot of times when playing another person that I just press A to hike the ball then don't actually touch anything and let the CPU run the play for me.
FyreWulff on
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Brainiac 8Don't call me Shirley...Registered Userregular
Madden needs to stay simulation, and they need to actually put effort behind the Wii version to match what Sega did in 2004 on vastly inferior hardware. To appeal to new people, bring NFL Arcade to WiiWare or a disc edition, under the BIG label. You sell both to the simulation crowd and the people that just want to play quick games of easy-to-play football. I mean I found Arcade fun to play, didn't buy it, but it would sell GREAT to people that stopped playing football games after the NES/SNES versions.
I have never seen a sports game fan that has done that.
Heh, I stopped playing Madden games after Madden '98. :P
Heck, I think I still own the cart for the game for my SNES. After that, I just didn't care to play the Madden games that made it more complicated and less fun for me.
Also, all those hundreds of thousands of people each year that were buying PS2 Madden over Xbox/Cube madden even though they looked better apparently didn't care about the graphics looking like a PS2 game.
PS2 Madden had a huge online community, which kept gamers tied to the PS2 year after year.
Also, all those hundreds of thousands of people each year that were buying PS2 Madden over Xbox/Cube madden even though they looked better apparently didn't care about the graphics looking like a PS2 game.
PS2 Madden had a huge online community, which kept gamers tied to the PS2 year after year.
Online had nothing to do with it.
FyreWulff on
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KetarCome on upstairswe're having a partyRegistered Userregular
Also, all those hundreds of thousands of people each year that were buying PS2 Madden over Xbox/Cube madden even though they looked better apparently didn't care about the graphics looking like a PS2 game.
PS2 Madden had a huge online community, which kept gamers tied to the PS2 year after year.
Online had nothing to do with it.
It was very much a contributing factor, and if you believe otherwise you're flat out wrong.
Also, all those hundreds of thousands of people each year that were buying PS2 Madden over Xbox/Cube madden even though they looked better apparently didn't care about the graphics looking like a PS2 game.
PS2 Madden had a huge online community, which kept gamers tied to the PS2 year after year.
Online had nothing to do with it.
It was very much a contributing factor, and if you believe otherwise you're flat out wrong.
Cool. Got the numbers to back that up?
I've got numbers that show that the online userbase of any console game has never exceeded 20%, even at launch.
Add onto the fact that fatty PS2s needed an addon to go online, which was really expensive to just buy casually.
No, I think it was more the fact that there was 80 million PS2 owners who were happy with the graphics quality of the PS2, and the 14 million Xbox/Cube owners who also had PS2s elected to buy the game on PS2 for the most part, because the other versions were just PS2 quick ports anyway, and had nothing to offer over the PS2 version.
If online was considered a peripheral, it would have been deemed a failure by everyone a long time ago. The N64 Expansion Pak had better userbase penetration, percentage-wise.
FyreWulff on
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KetarCome on upstairswe're having a partyRegistered Userregular
Also, all those hundreds of thousands of people each year that were buying PS2 Madden over Xbox/Cube madden even though they looked better apparently didn't care about the graphics looking like a PS2 game.
PS2 Madden had a huge online community, which kept gamers tied to the PS2 year after year.
Online had nothing to do with it.
It was very much a contributing factor, and if you believe otherwise you're flat out wrong.
Cool. Got the numbers to back that up?
I've got numbers that show that the online userbase of any console game has never exceeded 20%, even at launch.
Add onto the fact that fatty PS2s needed an addon to go online, which was really expensive to just buy casually.
No, I think it was more the fact that there was 80 million PS2 owners who were happy with the graphics quality of the PS2, and the 14 million Xbox/Cube owners who also had PS2s elected to buy the game on PS2 for the most part, because the other versions were just PS2 quick ports anyway, and had nothing to offer over the PS2 version.
If online was considered a peripheral, it would have been deemed a failure by everyone a long time ago. The N64 Expansion Pak had better userbase penetration, percentage-wise.
This seems rather contradictory to me.
In any event, finding online user numbers for 4+ year old editions of Madden is apparently beyond my Google-fu. I can only rely upon my memory of the online ranking system, and the many tens of thousands of ranked players as an indicator of a large online community - much more substantial than one would expect for that console generation.
I'd also note that the network adapter was $40 - hardly a prohibitive expense, and actually less than a typical year of Live which is routinely dismissed as beneath notice at $4/month or less...
Oh wait, found this link here: Per EA 250,000 registered online PS2 users for Madden and NCAA 2004 within 6 weeks, with a peak of 7,000 simultaneous users of Madden 2004 on Sep 14th, 2003.
So, uh, what was that about your numbers?
Madden NFL 2004: 3.95 million in US over its lifetime. Probably most of that was in its first six weeks.
NCAA Football 2004:1.28 million in US
250,000 out of 4,000,000.
6.25 percent.
Madden hit 2 million sales in the first 3 weeks alone.
Even if we assume that Madden sold equally across GameCube, Xbox, and PS2 (which we know for damn sure didn't happen, but would give the PS2 a bigger online attach rate with your numbers), that's a laughable 1.05% of the total people that bought the PS2 version of the game online at one time. Registrations are meaningless since simply loading up the game into online mode registered you for EA's service. I mean if we went by registrations, Halo 3 would have a 213% adoption rate for online.
The numbers can only go downhill from there. That's the best-case scenario.
Oh wait, found this link here: Per EA 250,000 registered online PS2 users for Madden and NCAA 2004 within 6 weeks, with a peak of 7,000 simultaneous users of Madden 2004 on Sep 14th, 2003.
So, uh, what was that about your numbers?
Madden NFL 2004: 3.95 million in US over its lifetime. Probably most of that was in its first six weeks.
NCAA Football 2004:1.28 million in US
250,000 out of 4,000,000.
6.25 percent.
That doesn't work.
You're comparing numbers from 6 weeks of just the PS2 compared to total LTD numbers of the game across all platforms?
Fact is, the PS2 version sold extremely fucking well. We all agree on that.
How much of that was due to its online capability? Probably not a huge amount.
But I wouldn't say it was an insignificant thing. The PS2 portion of online users wasn't insignificant. It was huge. It was a tiny part of the PS2 install base. But the install base was so fucking huge that PS2 online users were competitive with XBL users in terms of sheer volume.
And the most popular online games were the sports games.
See, you're trying to argue that some small percent of copies sold or percent of the user base or sales base was tiny compared to the overall number of copies sold.
But that's not what Ketar said. He said that Madden had a huge online user base on the PS2. And he's damn right and he's proven it if you ask me.
NOW - what the other side is right about is this: The overall number of vast, vast PS2 sales of Madden or of any version were not due to the online capabilities. The online community was big in terms of sheer numbers, but that ginormous massive number of PS2 sales was not due in large part because of that. It was due to many factors, mostly the PS2 being the console of choice for the mainstream. Buying each iteration of Madden year after year, of course you're going to keep buying it for the system you have regardless of whether you play online or not. The PS2 install base was huge and mainstream and most people just bothered having only a PS2. That's the major reason Madden sold well on the PS2 year after year, not because the online community was persistent and people kept wanting to play it online each year.
tl;dr -- both sides are arguing different things and essentially both sides are correct.
honestly the biggest contributing factor for the Madden/Fifa game sales on PS2 will be to do with the quote;
"Which version are all my friends playing?"
because offline Madden and Fifa have always been party games, and its a damn sight harder to set up leagues over multi platforms to take to each others houses.
The online was succesful, yes. But it played zero part in selling the title or 'keeping it going'. That was the Madden name and the NFL branding.
You're right. Well I wouldn't say zero part in selling, I'd say that there is a small bunch that kept buying it to play it online each year. But your general notion is correct.
Massive PS2 sales were not due to the online capability or community, and year after year the same massive Madden sales were not due to people wanting to continue on with the online community.
However Ketar is also right in that the PS2 online community was not insignificant. But the online community being persistent as contributing factor in sales each successive year is, relatively, insignificant overall.
The online was succesful, yes. But it played zero part in selling the title or 'keeping it going'. That was the Madden name and the NFL branding.
Ahh, but this didn't start with my citing online play as a reason for Madden sales in general. It was cited as a reason why gamers who owned multiple consoles would choose to purchase the PS2 edition year after year despite the Xbox/Cube versions having better graphics.
The online play for PS2 that was not matched by either the Gamecube or Xbox versions (due to the falling out between EA and MS mentioned in the article I linked over Live terms) was a contributing factor in the decisions of multi-console owners to buy for PS2 rather than other better looking versions. Just like the also-mentioned "Well, which version are my friends playing?" factor.
Ketar on
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Brainiac 8Don't call me Shirley...Registered Userregular
edited December 2009
I will just add that online capabilities in no way played a part in me buying Madden '98. :^:
Posts
Buh? I didn't even know this existed.
all i remember it doing was tying halo 2 vista to it for some reason but apparently it shut down earlier this year
Oh crap, now we have to through a "Back in my day" story from FyreWulff.
... but seriously what's Digital Locker?
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_locker
Though considering most of us tech nerds haven't heard of it, it's no wonder it failed.
That was surprisingly honest and level headed and fair.
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Interesting to hear what John Burton had to say about it.
Not wanting to get back into the digital vs physical media debate, but I'm with him.
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But then again EA couldn't match the visual quality of NFL2K5 on the Xbox with their own Xbox versions
Yeah, so let's drop then even below what the PS2 can do
DSE - because they thought they could pull a Resident Evil Chronicles
Madden - because it's a mainstream game on a mainstream platform
both are high quality games
The problem is that it ignores the reasons for the success of both of these. REUC succeeded because it was attached to one of the world's biggest franchises period. Madden succeeds on other platforms because it appeals to people that are anal about football realism in every respect who see non-HD platform versions as inferior, especially when they are modified to include an everyone-can-play "All Play" mode.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
Maybe, but consider the incentive. It's naked women in a videogame. Not only does this alienate some potential audiences (hello women, eldery, parents, general non-horny highschoolers), but it's blatantly sexist. The principle, offering something that doesn't change game play, is in tact, but in this case it's a complete disaster. It perpetuates stereotypes and negative associations on both sides of the fence (male and female), and it does so acting as if it is a privilege for that opportunity.
Or the PSP Go will die? That's almost to suggest that it is alive to begin with! :P I am kidding of course.
Anyway, he's making the same point everyone has made in the past about this sort of thing when it comes to full on retail titles on console/handhelds. Why pay full price digitally when you can buy cheaper for physical and have potential to resell, on a system that you pay less for up front (PSP3k)?
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
Madden Wii is the red-headed stepsubseries of the Madden franchise. The sheer amount of pointless changes they made and kept making to the series is mindboggling. Gamers just want Madden, EA.
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Plus it perpetuates the negative stereotypes of the videogame industry and of "gamers."
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
Well, All-Play was optional, wasn't it? That's a good thing to add.
The bad thing is that if people wanted to play football like on the TVs, all the other features didn't match up. I mean come on.
I swear EA's Wii team is just incompetent at this point. This is how you do hair on the Nintendo 64.
This is what Sega did with the Xbox.
This was EA's effort from the same year.
It's optional in all the games that it is in. And I agree that it's a good idea.
However, the market for Madden games see it as a bad thing. The poeple that buy Madden every year in droves hate the idea, even if it is optional.
They want their Madden a certain way, and that way includes the best possible and most realistic graphics, and for a multitude of reasons this crowd is not going to want a version that is less ideal in that respect as well as other respects.
Including the new style that you pointed out.
I'm all for style over realism with the Wii and it's limited power, but I think that the new Madden style causes an even greater divergence from the people who buy Madden games.
So why do it?
I think EA is NOT trying to appeal to the traditional Madden crowd but to appeal to a newer, broader potential football fan audience on the Wii . I think they believe that the Wii crowd would be amenable to this new style and the All Play thing. That they can start growing and developign a new kind of Madden user base IN ADDITION to the traditional one. I mean, why keep selling to people that are glued to one type of football game when you can keep that market and expand into another one too?
That's the thinking and it's smart thinking. But I think that most people interested in playing virtual football look to madden, and when they do that, they go with the percieved mainstream "superior product."
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
That Super Bowl analogy is fucking grand and spot on.
At least the cover isn't as bad as the one for the NCAA Wii version that one year.
But bring back the BIG label. I mean come on, EA just basically ported the Wii version of Madden to the 360 and called it Madden NFL Arcade. Even they are saying that the Wii version is the "lite edition".
Also, all those hundreds of thousands of people each year that were buying PS2 Madden over Xbox/Cube madden even though they looked better apparently didn't care about the graphics looking like a PS2 game.
Madden needs to stay simulation, and they need to actually put effort behind the Wii version to match what Sega did in 2004 on vastly inferior hardware. To appeal to new people, bring NFL Arcade to WiiWare or a disc edition, under the BIG label. You sell both to the simulation crowd and the people that just want to play quick games of easy-to-play football. I mean I found Arcade fun to play, didn't buy it, but it would sell GREAT to people that stopped playing football games after the NES/SNES versions.
I have never seen a sports game fan that has done that.
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Fuck, the controls started getting too complicated for me. I stopped buying NCAA after 05.
There's a lot of times when playing another person that I just press A to hike the ball then don't actually touch anything and let the CPU run the play for me.
Heh, I stopped playing Madden games after Madden '98. :P
Heck, I think I still own the cart for the game for my SNES. After that, I just didn't care to play the Madden games that made it more complicated and less fun for me.
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PS2 Madden had a huge online community, which kept gamers tied to the PS2 year after year.
Online had nothing to do with it.
It was very much a contributing factor, and if you believe otherwise you're flat out wrong.
Cool. Got the numbers to back that up?
I've got numbers that show that the online userbase of any console game has never exceeded 20%, even at launch.
Add onto the fact that fatty PS2s needed an addon to go online, which was really expensive to just buy casually.
No, I think it was more the fact that there was 80 million PS2 owners who were happy with the graphics quality of the PS2, and the 14 million Xbox/Cube owners who also had PS2s elected to buy the game on PS2 for the most part, because the other versions were just PS2 quick ports anyway, and had nothing to offer over the PS2 version.
If online was considered a peripheral, it would have been deemed a failure by everyone a long time ago. The N64 Expansion Pak had better userbase penetration, percentage-wise.
This seems rather contradictory to me.
In any event, finding online user numbers for 4+ year old editions of Madden is apparently beyond my Google-fu. I can only rely upon my memory of the online ranking system, and the many tens of thousands of ranked players as an indicator of a large online community - much more substantial than one would expect for that console generation.
I'd also note that the network adapter was $40 - hardly a prohibitive expense, and actually less than a typical year of Live which is routinely dismissed as beneath notice at $4/month or less...
Oh wait, found this link here: Per EA 250,000 registered online PS2 users for Madden and NCAA 2004 within 6 weeks, with a peak of 7,000 simultaneous users of Madden 2004 on Sep 14th, 2003.
So, uh, what was that about your numbers?
NCAA Football 2004:1.28 million in US
250,000 out of 4,000,000.
6.25 percent.
Madden hit 2 million sales in the first 3 weeks alone.
Even if we assume that Madden sold equally across GameCube, Xbox, and PS2 (which we know for damn sure didn't happen, but would give the PS2 a bigger online attach rate with your numbers), that's a laughable 1.05% of the total people that bought the PS2 version of the game online at one time. Registrations are meaningless since simply loading up the game into online mode registered you for EA's service. I mean if we went by registrations, Halo 3 would have a 213% adoption rate for online.
The numbers can only go downhill from there. That's the best-case scenario.
That doesn't work.
You're comparing numbers from 6 weeks of just the PS2 compared to total LTD numbers of the game across all platforms?
In that case, 6 percent is pretty fucking good.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
How much of that was due to its online capability? Probably not a huge amount.
But I wouldn't say it was an insignificant thing. The PS2 portion of online users wasn't insignificant. It was huge. It was a tiny part of the PS2 install base. But the install base was so fucking huge that PS2 online users were competitive with XBL users in terms of sheer volume.
And the most popular online games were the sports games.
See, you're trying to argue that some small percent of copies sold or percent of the user base or sales base was tiny compared to the overall number of copies sold.
But that's not what Ketar said. He said that Madden had a huge online user base on the PS2. And he's damn right and he's proven it if you ask me.
NOW - what the other side is right about is this: The overall number of vast, vast PS2 sales of Madden or of any version were not due to the online capabilities. The online community was big in terms of sheer numbers, but that ginormous massive number of PS2 sales was not due in large part because of that. It was due to many factors, mostly the PS2 being the console of choice for the mainstream. Buying each iteration of Madden year after year, of course you're going to keep buying it for the system you have regardless of whether you play online or not. The PS2 install base was huge and mainstream and most people just bothered having only a PS2. That's the major reason Madden sold well on the PS2 year after year, not because the online community was persistent and people kept wanting to play it online each year.
tl;dr -- both sides are arguing different things and essentially both sides are correct.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
"Which version are all my friends playing?"
because offline Madden and Fifa have always been party games, and its a damn sight harder to set up leagues over multi platforms to take to each others houses.
You're right. Well I wouldn't say zero part in selling, I'd say that there is a small bunch that kept buying it to play it online each year. But your general notion is correct.
Massive PS2 sales were not due to the online capability or community, and year after year the same massive Madden sales were not due to people wanting to continue on with the online community.
However Ketar is also right in that the PS2 online community was not insignificant. But the online community being persistent as contributing factor in sales each successive year is, relatively, insignificant overall.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
Ahh, but this didn't start with my citing online play as a reason for Madden sales in general. It was cited as a reason why gamers who owned multiple consoles would choose to purchase the PS2 edition year after year despite the Xbox/Cube versions having better graphics.
The online play for PS2 that was not matched by either the Gamecube or Xbox versions (due to the falling out between EA and MS mentioned in the article I linked over Live terms) was a contributing factor in the decisions of multi-console owners to buy for PS2 rather than other better looking versions. Just like the also-mentioned "Well, which version are my friends playing?" factor.
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