EA Sports MMA is 'dead on arrival' at retail
New fighter not likely to become franchise; MoH, Madden 11 also disappoint
The latest sports game from EA is dead on arrival at retail, according to Doug Creutz of Cowan & Company, who also comes down hard on the performance of a number of recent releases from the publisher.
While the company is likely to meet expectations for the full year, Creutz pointed to lacklustre performances of EA Sports MMA, Medal of Honor and Madden 11 - with FIFA 11 the only positive seller from a pack of high-profile releases.
"Medal of Honor earned weak reviews, and we expect sales post the launch period to decline precipitously (particularly once Call of Duty: Black Ops hits retail)," noted Creutz.
"EA's recently released MMA appears to be more or less DOA at retail, while UFC recently announced an extension of its license with THQ, likely putting an end to EA's efforts to expand into the mixed martial arts genre."
EA Sports MMA entered the UK charts this week at number 23. The first iteration of THQ's rival UFC franchise sold very well, but the most recent release hasn't lived up to expectations, with the publisher deciding against annual updates.
Earlier this month EA announced that FIFA 11 sold over 2.6 million units in its first week, while Medal of Honor sold 1.5 million units in five days.
Remember all those forecasts on the spectacular growth of in-game advertising, year on year retail sales growth, virtual worlds, mobile gaming, the decline of Nintendo? How visionary those all turned out to be huh?
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Maarten Brands on 26th October 2010 2:25pm
Further, I haven't seen sales projections for Madden 11, but Medal of Honor was doing very well post-launch, and I suspect it will clear 4-5 million sales easily. Only the foolish would have genuinely expected it might challenge CoD, but EA themselves have said they're in it for the long haul, so there's plenty of time to grow and evolve.
I do suspect The Sims 3 will disappoint though - there doesn't seem to have been any hype for it, and I think it's out next week.
Bearing in mind the analyst hit rate of actually getting things right, why does anyone put stock in there opinions?
Also, Medal of Honor moving 1.5 million in 5 days almost guarantees a sequel. This entire article makes very little sense. I myself had no idea EA MMA was out yet, and I don't see them abandoning it. If anything, the biggest EA blunder of the year is NBA Elite.
The market is very volatile and everything lies in the hands of gamers.
I do not think anyone can predict\project what will happen the next year.
Did anyone expect\predicted that angry birds would be the top selling game on iphone?
or that it would become a multi-platform title?
Do not underestimate the power of the gaming community which is unpredictable.
This is the most powerful wild card today.
When gamers find value in a title at a satisfactory level they will support it, invest
their money and time in it, and expect the developer to deliver improvements
in a reasonable amount of time based on the complexity of the task judging from
previous experience, as well as more transparent interactions with the developers.
If they feel that there was no honest effort from the developer's side to provide
quality content, and lack of sincerity in their interactions, they simply move on
and do not waste their precious time and money.
I really hope ToR doesn't end up like Waterworld did. Kevin Costner and others put hundreds of millions into this film a decade ago, which flopped hard intitially, and barely broke even with worldwide sells. The entertainment industry is a strange monster; There have been games I would have thought would do well and end up suffering.
Then again there probably are 1 million hardcore Star Wars fans in the world who will easily pay the monthly rate no matter what. I say this because as many of you know EA has said they need 1 million subs to just break even. Not sure if it still is 1 million, or if that number has been adjusted.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Christopher Willis on 26th October 2010 6:05pm
But sadly, like Metacritic, stockholders follow their 'estimates' and 'well founded assumptions' and invest their futures in their holly words.
Thing is, a huge number of these 'experts' rarely play games, if at all, and simply look at basic figures, and rule of the human factor. Which, as in all things dealing with human emotion and predictability, precarious at best.
While we take no real heed in their predictions, sadly those investors do, which helps drive their input into the various companies $$ income for future game development and publishing. These analysts could well do with having a gaming sidekick to help them understand the 'actual' industry better, and thus probably be much more accurate, and thus help drive more $$'s into the publishers and developers hands to help fund more new IP's and more PR money for titles other than the known AAA's.
Thus increasing public awareness, and thus ideally increasing the likelihood of greater sales across the board.
this is the reason why i dont beleive analysits but instead used demos and playing the game (though thinks like betas) to judge weather its a worthly buy...
Analysts - please prove your knowledge of our industry and your value to it by predicting some success stories. Who knows, you might even help sustain the industry you "analyse".
Puffing up and down a company's stocks based on the ramblings of an overpaid Fortune 500-teller reeks of ethical toiletry in my book. Trying to predict doomsday when ANY game doesn't perform like a Vegas hooker within a few days of launch (or like a weekend blockbuster !!!BOOM!!! goes the midnight launch!!!) is stupid. Who pays these boobs anyway (and can I get these jokers removed because they're too big and fake)?
Good games (hell, any games) need time and word of mouth (outside of most major game review sites, in terms of niche titles) to gather a proper audience. Sadly, we're in this ADD stage where if you don't move a skrillion units within three days of launch and a game isn't scoring 196% aggregated on Metacrtic, game company stocks drop (*Oh Nooooooes!*) and another studio closes before it has time to patch the product that whip got cracked on it to rush out the door.
Feh.
There's loads of good MMA shows which are far better than most of the UFC cards of late but they have no exposure and no-one cares. UFC has the market for now and will continue as such for the forseeable future.
MMA/UFC game sales are just an offshoot of that, I'll pick EA MMA up when it's $30 in a month :)