EA Sports' latest Madden was easily the best selling title for the month of August, racking up close to 2 million unit sales across its five SKUs. The Wii SKU, however, which EA put extra effort into redesigning with an all-new visual style and other Wii-specific features, only managed to sell 67K copies, The NPD Group has told IndustryGamers.
As EEDAR analyst Jesse Divnich previously commented, it may just be that gamers who shifted from PS2 to Wii this generation may also have shifted their gaming tastes and aren't as interested in Madden anymore... at least not Madden on the Wii. The previous Madden with "All-Play" on the box didn't do very well either.
When IndustryGamers last met with EA Sports boss Peter Moore, we asked him about the problem of Madden on Wii. He responded, "...we believe we've got that formula right, the marketing right, and we've got two great athletes on the cover. The game is a blast... but again, ask me when the first NPD numbers come out and I'll tell you."
It looks like we'll have to ask him again!
Update: An EA Sports representative told us that they couldn't address the game's sales because the company's in a quiet period before the close of EA's fiscal quarter on September 30. That said, EA is "pleased with the leap in quality that the Madden franchise has made across all platforms."
4 Comments
September 11, 2009
That's crazy. You guys should do a huge Dark Side of Wii feature.
September 11, 2009
We already kinda did: http://www.industrygamers.com/galleries/lowered-expectations-why-the-wii-core-audience-wont-ever-show-up/
September 11, 2009
Lol@"Dark side of Wii".
"Together the Wii and me will rule the galaxy with an iron wiimote".
September 12, 2009
I see the numbers are 0.19M at vgc which a claim about NPD making a mistake is rumored. Anyway I believe these numbers until I read about a NPD correction. Either way is crazy that PS2 sold 0.26M.