November 2007 NPD

It's that time of month again, with NPD releasing data and me burning a weekend looking at numbers. The results are here.

The guys on NeoGAF picked up what may be an inaccuracy in the numbers NPD provided to me. I might have to fix the graph showing original Sony IP sales, since the Resistance: Fall of Man number appears to be YTD, not LTD.

Now I'm going to enjoy a little time with actual games and not sales numbers. The Burnout Paradise demo is quite slick (and just annoying enough that I'd be tempted to buy the game instead of continuing to enjoy the demo long term). I'm enjoying Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror on the PSP.

Oh, and a copy of Deep Fear for the Saturn arrived. I think I'll give that a try. The audio I've heard (MP3 link) is hilarious. Could be fun.

Labels: business, data, graphs, nextgen, npd

--jvm at 13:55

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Best year? Not for Reviews, but for Sales.

Next-Gen asked me to look into whether this was the best year ever and I started tallying up review scores. Some interesting things came out of that, a few of which are in an article there today about how this could be considered the best year.

The deal is that review scores overall are down this year. In fact, only 2006 is worse. And it's not just a fraction of a point, it's a point or two spread.

By several other measures, this has been a great year. I honestly think we could see sales over $19 billion this year. Software sales are way up. People appear to be really enjoying games, in part because of the Wii and games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero.

But my favorite bit was recalling the discussions -- particularly right after Sega went software-only -- about how maybe the market could only support two major consoles. If anything, this year has shown that the market has grown to support FOUR consoles: PS2, PS3, Wii, and Xbox 360. Sure, the PS3 is hurting, but it will still probably do a good bit better than the GameCube eventually. Maybe you want to say that the PS2 + PS3 count as one -- I'd probably accept that, but the point stands that the market is robust enough to keep three systems going, minimum.

I got some more stuff out of the digging behind this article that will either end up here or somewhere else eventually.

Labels: business, data, graphs, nextgen

--jvm at 10:10

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ESRB Rating Distributions

I have a piece up today at Gamasutra about ESRB rating distributions. Turns out each console manufacturer has a reasonably distinct distribution of ESRB ratings on their platforms. There are some changes over time -- the Wii has fewer M-rated games than the GameCube -- but it is there.

Here are the Nintendo platforms, for example:

The one platform that was less successful also had a different distribution of games. Obviously, that's not causality, but it is amusing.

This piece came out of my playing with the new "filter by ESRB rating" option on the front page of GameStop's online store. I would never use it while shopping for myself, but it does give parents a very visible tool to filter out games they may want to avoid.

Labels: data, esrb, Gamasutra, graphs

--jvm at 10:02

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October NPD

Another month, another set of graphs. I stuck my neck out a bit more than usual with the comments at the end on what we could expect to see in November. I might regret that.

Labels: business, data, graphs, nextgen, npd

--jvm at 11:47

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September NPD graphs and babble

Another month, another piece about videogame sales.

I keep the official article as emotionless as possible, but I'll let go here a bit. Going over Sony's numbers is grim business. The PS2 is slowly fading. The PS3 is not growing, but shrinking. The PSP is moving hardware, but the software market for it is essentially moribund.

I've said it before -- perhaps not here -- but I don't understand why they abandoned the simple, cheap, easy-to-develop-for model that brought them such success on the PS1. With its ease-of-development, it's no surprise that developers don't mind putting their bigger games on the Xbox 360. And cheaper games find an easy home on the Wii -- although sales could be better for third party software.

Each hardware manufacturer has had its own unique hardware problem this term. Microsoft has had hardware failures. Nintendo has had supply problems. Sony has had high hardware costs.

Extended warranties appear to have fixed Microsoft's problem, for the time being. Nintendo is gradually increasing supply. Sony -- it's clear that the June price adjustments weren't enough. I'm not convinced that the new $400 model will do the trick either.

Labels: data, graphs, nextgen, npd

--jvm at 10:15

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Next Generation NPD

My writing on NPD's monthly videogame industry data moved this month to Next-Gen.biz. It also grew into two separate articles.

Hardware part.
Software part.

Comments, as always, are welcome.

Labels: business, data, graphs, nextgen, npd

--jvm at 10:05

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PS3 Compatibility of My PS2 Library

To follow up on my post about how well my PS1 library will play on a PS3, here are the results with the 90 games in my PS2 library, which you can check out at MobyGames. The 60Gb wins.

For the 60Gb:
84 games work just fine (93%)
2 have video corruption (2D movies)
1 has graphics corruption (2D or 3D game graphics)
1 has some sort of audio problem (corrupted audio)
1 has a fatal hang
1 doesn't work with some sort of extra hardware

That works out to 89 out of 90, or 98.9%, being playable with minor inconvenient issues on a 60Gb PS3.

The results for the software emulation of PS2 games...

For the 80Gb:
50 games work just fine (57%)
7 have video corruption (2D movies)
12 have graphics corruption (2D or 3D graphics)
12 have a fatal hang
1 doesn't work with some sort of extra hardware
5 have speed problems (running slowly)
1 doesn't work online
1 is not in Sony's database

That works out to 76 out of 90, or 84%, which are documented playable with minor inconvenient issues.

Here are the graphs:
I intend to keep my old PS2 around, so most or all of these games should be available to play on that system even when they don't work on a PS3. Still, for out of the box compatibility the 60Gb really seems like the system to get. We'll see how well MonkeyKing's feelings about the software emulation pan out...

Labels: data, emulation, graphs, ps2, ps3, psone, sony

--jvm at 00:31

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PS3 Compatibility of My PS1 Library

Either model of the PS3 will probably play your PS1 games as well as the other. That's my conclusion after I checked the compatibility of the 128 PS1 games in my library, as cataloged on MobyGames. Here's the breakdown

105 work just fine (that's 82%)
4 have video corruption (2D movies)
8 have graphics corruption (2D or 3D game graphics)
4 have some sort of audio problem (usually just a wrong or truncated sound)
4 have a bug that can cause a hang (only a couple are truly fatal)
1 has a controller issue
2 have speed problems (usually running slowly)

The number that probably really matters: 126 out of 128 will work with minor inconvenient issues. That's 98.4%.

If you'd prefer a graph, here you go:
Out of these 128 games, the 80Gb and 60Gb models have exactly the same compatibility issues. Although I've never seen it said somewhere, this leads me to believe that the PS1 compatibility is purely software, and has nothing to do with the PS2 hardware in the 60Gb PS3 model. Sony has a software PS1 emulator after all, the one used on the PSP! Moreover, when issues have been fixed with PS1 game compatibility, they're fixed by a firmware update.

So, there is no compelling reason to get either PS3 model over the other if your concern is PS1 compatibility.

Incidentally, I believe you still can't play the downloadable PS1 games on the PlayStation Network with a PS3 at one time you couldn't play downlodable PS1 games on the PlayStation Network with a PS3. If indeed there is was a software PS1 emulator built right into the firmware, then I'm really puzzled about Sony's reluctance to make those PS1 games playable on both the PSP and the PS3. What's What was going on there?

I'm working on combing through my PS2 library. I'll have another post up when I get done.

Labels: data, emulation, graphs, ps3, psone, psp, sony

--jvm at 21:20

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Game Price Trends since 2004

Someone recently suggested I look at game prices, especially since the advent of $60 PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 games. The results are up today at Next-Gen.biz. I used mostly public data on the top 10 and top 20 lists since June 2004, with some additional data provided by NPD.

To my mind, the upshot is that Wii games are holding the $50 floor while $50 and $60 Xbox 360 games are filling in the top 20, pushing the average price of the top-selling games higher. PlayStation 2 games are getting pushed out, removing the main downward pressure from console games. Only the Nintendo DS presence in the top 10 and top 20 is pulling game prices below $50.

Additional bits that didn't go into the article:

• NPD was very helpful providing more data. While I didn't get everything I wanted (understandable), they did take a sample spreadsheet from me with a formula in it and apply the same to months for which unit sales data is not public. I especially need to thank David Riley of NPD for his patience and effort helping me.
  
  
• The public NPD data on the top 10 and top 20 is easiest to get from this page on GameDaily.
  
  
• NPD apparently revises their lists, but the published lists don't reflect this. For example, Bully for the PS2 placed #9 in October 2006 according to published charts. It actually placed #3 on the October 2006 list I got directly from NPD. There were some other very minor changes here and there, mostly transposing two games (say #2 and #3 switching).

As usual, thoughts and so forth in the comments.

Edit: Fixed link. Blogger's WYSIWYG interface hates URLs with ampersands.

Labels: data, graphs, nextgen, npd, prices

--jvm at 08:25

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NPD analysis at Gamasutra

Recently the editor of Gamasutra asked me if I was up for some analysis work, and we worked out an opportunity for me to do some Friday morning comments on the monthly NPD data releases. The first such piece is up this morning. You can drop your usual insults and criticisms into the comments below.

In addition to the link, I want to raise two points that came to me while I was doing the legwork these past couple of days:

• If you don't pay for the NPD reports (expensive), getting all the information in one centralized location is a real chore. While you can get some stuff from places like NeoGAF, a lot of the stuff I wanted was written out in sentences, not tables. So I spent hours extracting numbers from articles, putting them into a spreasheet, and in many cases deducing the numbers which were not said.
  
  To elaborate: If NPD reports total sales, hardware (console and handheld combined) sales, console software sales, and accessory sales then you can deduce portable software sales by subtracting hardware, accessory, and console software from the total. If you have numbers for one segment of the market for two out of three months in a quarter and also the quarterly totals, you can deduce the missing month's segment numbers. And then using the growth percentages, you can compute numbers for all categories for the previous year.
  
  Then there are the top software sales lists. Lately NPD is reporting top 10 software titles with sales numbers, and later in the month you can get a top 20 list, but without numbers on places 11-20. If you're lucky there will be one or two numbers for spots 11-20 mentioned in the text of an article somewhere, which gives you a bit more data for the scale of the sales for places 11-20.
  
  Which is all to say, I'm finally in a position where I think I've got this data under control and can fill in holes and add new data as it becomes available. Perhaps I'll make periodic dumps in CVS, ODS, and XLS format here, so stay tuned.
  
  
• While I was looking at present and upcoming software releases, I began to wonder if Tomb Raider Anniversary will appear on the PC sales charts for June. As we've covered before, the sales are not only in brick-and-mortar stores but also on GameTap and Steam. I consider it possible (although I don't know yet how probable) that TRA will miss the sales charts because (I believe) NPD doesn't count sales of the game through online distribution.
  
  But the point is more general than just Tomb Raider -- as the relationship between online distribution and brick-and-mortar stores changes, a company like NPD that measures sales in brick-and-mortar stores will have to adapt. Certainly the hardware figures will continue to be interesting, but the software numbers may lose some of their meaning.

Labels: business, data, graphs

--jvm at 10:45

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Console price cuts

A piece about console pricing with lots of pretty graphs is up today at Next-Gen.biz if you care to check it out. I will try to get the data I used into a presentable form and attach it as an update to this post when I get time, so others have an opportunity to poke around and see what else is there.

Now if Microsoft will just drop its price, I'll be sitting pretty.

Labels: business, data, graphs, nextgen

--jvm at 07:20

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Nintendo DS vs. Sony PSP: Game pricing update

With the basic PSP dropping to $169.99, I felt it was time to see what had changed since I did some rudimentary number crunching on Nintendo DS and Sony PSP game prices five months ago. Not only has the system price dropped, but publishers have abandoned $50 PSP games. Average PSP game prices have shifted down $2.16, although it still has more high priced games than the Nintendo DS. During the same period, average DS game prices have come down about $1.68.

Here's the key result:

Average Game Price	Mid-Nov 2006	Mid-Apr 2007
DS	$28.97	$27.29
PSP	$31.97	$29.83

Some of the drop in the average PSP game price can be attributed to the disappearance of $49.99 games. In November 2006, the PSP had one such game. Removing just that one game from the November data would have dropped the average price of a PSP game by $0.16.

The only PSP game that currently lists for $49.99 is the PSP version of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, an unreleased game slated for a December 2007 launch. (As it is unreleased, it isn't figured in the numbers shown in this article.)

Other points of interest:

• EB Games lists 102 new games for the Nintendo DS and 94 new games for the PSP. This doesn't count out-of-stock and unreleased games, so the numbers could shift 2-3 games either way in a day's time.
• The median game price for each system is $29.99.
• About 33% of all PSP games retail for under $25. Around 41% of Nintendo DS games are below the $25 level.
• About 1/3 of all PSP games retail for $39.99. Only one Nintendo DS game sells for that price (Final Fantasy III DS), while about 23% of Nintendo DS games retail for over $30.
• 18 out of 22 Nintendo DS games priced at $34.99 are Nintendo-published games.

Finally, here is a graph of the distribution of games across the various prices. Click the image for the full-sized version.
The disappearance of the $50 game makes things a bit harder for publishers on the PSP. Being able to charge $50 for a PSP game was one advantage that system had over the DS. It would be interesting to know if publishers have made a pricing decision based on market conditions or whether Sony has set a $40 ceiling on PSP game prices. I suspect that Nintendo generally won't let publishers charge $40 on the Nintendo DS, although an exception has clearly been made for Final Fantasy III DS.

Now that the $50 option is missing, the big name PSP titles launch at $40. Moreover, I suspect that some publishers are less likely to stay at $40 as long when there are no games in the higher $50 bracket. Notably, even Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories can command only a $30 price tag six months after it was released; by comparison, Liberty City Stories stayed at $50 for almost the entire first year after its release.

I look forward to examining sales data over the coming months to see if the hardware and software price adjustments affect PSP sales.

Feel free to download the data for yourself: OpenOffice ODS, plaintext CSV.

Labels: business, data, ds, graphs, nintendo, psp, sony

--jvm at 01:36

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Another view of sales by genre and publisher, plus spreadsheet

This is my last post on this data, but I was a bit dismayed to see that the graphs in Next-Gen.biz's huge article yesterday (previous post) only counted titles in each genre and from each publisher, not taking into account the sales of each. That's sort of like the Senate version of the data. Here is the House of Representatives version where I've taken publishers and genres and totalled the unit sales for each.

First, unit sales by genre. As always, click for the larger version.
Compare to the original Next-Gen.biz graph here.

Notes:

• Sports games pull a bit ahead of licensed (non-sports) games.
• Shooters jump ahead of Action games by a hair.
• RPGs move way up to parity with Action games and Shooters. (This is largely Square-Enix, although also some Pokemon.)
• Finally, the Other column shrinks relative to the others.

Next, we look at unit sales by publisher:
Compare to the original Next-Gen.biz graph here.

Notes:

• EA pulls even further out ahead of everyone else. Much of that is just Madden NFL 07.
• THQ jumps to third place with its licensed game sales.
• Activision jumps to fourth on the strength of Call of Duty 3 and Guitar Hero 2.
• Take Two drops to fifth because they have more titles but none are huge sellers. (No GTA on consoles aside from the Liberty City Stories port from the PSP.)
• Square leaps from the bottom of the pack to the middle thanks to its small number of huge-selling RPGs.
• Microsoft jumps ahead of Sony primarily on sales of Gears of War.

As promised, here is my spreadsheet. If you add anything else to it, like release dates, please drop me a copy and I'll upload it here.

• OpenOffice 2.0 ODS format (showing formulas and charts)
  
• CSV of just the game data

Enjoy.

Labels: business, data, graphs, nextgen

--jvm at 12:58

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Correlation between Sales and Review Scores

There is a wealth of data in the Next-Gen.biz post today. Regrettably, I did not see a spreadsheet of data to play with. I have made one which I will upload later. Using my copy of the data I made a scatter plot of sales versus review scores. I excluded Madden since it is an aberration, an outlier. It would be at 6500 on the horizontal axis and 85% on the vertical one, so you can see how far out it would be. (Click for a larger version.)
The correlation coefficient shows whether there is a correlation between two sets of data. The closer it is to 1.0, the more closely correlated the data are. The closer to 0.0, the less a correlation. The correlation between unit sales and revenue, for example, is 0.97, which shows that higher sales is closely correlated with higher revenue.

According to OpenOffice, the correlation coefficient between unit sales and score is 0.29. I think we can speak of 0.29 as being a bit low. There is a closer correlation between revenue and review score at a 0.38 correlation coefficient.

Interestingly, Madden skews the numbers a great deal. Taking it out of the data, the correlation coefficient between unit sales and data is 0.34 and the correlation coefficient between revenue and review score is 0.46.

Which leads me to think that there is more than just my intuition to tell me that "consumers know quality when they see it" isn't quite the real picture. They may know quality, but that doesn't mean they want to spend their money on it.

Labels: business, data, graphs, nextgen

--jvm at 18:55

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15% crap or 38% crap?

I hope to get more time going over the stats later today, but at first glance I was bothered by this statement in Next-Gen.biz's latest entry in the TOP 100 TOP 100 LISTS OF ALL TIME.

It also shows that consumers know quality when they see it. Only three games in the top 20 scored an average of less than 75%.

Ok, so that's 15% are below average. What about the whole list of 100 games? Well, 38 games (i.e. 38%) are below average. That's a big difference and a far bit from convincing me that consumers know quality when they see it.

Labels: business, graphs, nextgen

--jvm at 08:25

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The best selling game systems of all time

In a business whose headlines are dominated by the hardware and software sales of Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft, it helps to have a little perspective. In this case, the needed context is probably in your pocket right now.

Let's review some numbers. In the last two generations, Sony has sold over 230 million PlayStation-branded game machines. Nintendo has sold nearly 400 million from its home consoles -- NES, SNES, Nintendo 64, and GameCube -- to its long-dominant handheld systems -- Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, and Nintendo DS. While it has only had a console on shelves since 2001, Microsoft has already racked up combined sales of over 30 million of its two Xbox systems.

Yet these are not the game systems most people own. Their game systems don't say Nintendo or Microsoft or Sony. They say Nokia or Motorola or Samsung. (Ok, some of them actually do say Sony: Sony Erricsson. But they're still relatively small.) Even the cheapest phones can play some form of Tetris nowadays and many are far, far more capable.

According to Strategy Analytics, over one billion mobile phones shipped during all of 2006. In all of 2006, the leading vendor, Nokia, shipped almost 350 million phones. Those numbers are just staggering when compared to the sales of dedicated game systems. For example, if we consider all the systems shipped by Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo since 1983 and compare to just the mobile phone shipments in 2006 we get the following:
In fact, if we combine the numbers for Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo and stack that up against the mobile phone shipments, it's still not much of a contest.
According to NPD, the dedicated videogame market made an estimated $6.5 billion on software last year alone. With over a billion phones shipped in 2006, is it any surprise that analysts regularly predict that the mobile game market will eventually hit $10 billion a year in the near future?

Labels: business, graphs, microsoft, mobile, nintendo, sony

--jvm at 14:46

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More Launch Game Stats

Update: Revised data is now available in a newer post.

The piece for Next-Gen.biz is up, called Predicting Those Launch Review Scores. It looks at how launch games have performed in the past and applies the ratios to make a guess at what we'll see for the PlayStation 3 and Wii. I'd like to add a few things here that didn't get into the other piece.

First, here is an expanded version of the graph showing averages. It includes the maximum, average, median, and minimum review averages for each platform.
And here is a comparison of the number of launch games, by platform.
The systems are color coded:

• Sony: RU E? (One of the slogans for the first PlayStation, as I recall.)
  
• Nintendo: Yellow, for no good reason.
• Sega: Blue, as in the hedgehog.
• Microsoft: The unmistakable Xbox green.

I was surprised at how well the GameCube looked on paper when it came out. The games reviewed well, and it even had a Madden title in there that was well-received. You might also note that successive systems from the same company tend to have more games and be reviewed more positively. My gut tells me that the PlayStation 3 won't do as well this time around, and I really can't get a grasp on how the Wii games will be reviewed. So much will depend on how the controller handles.

There are a few other bits of data people might find interesting.

Top 11 Launch Games:

1. Halo: Combat Evolved, Xbox, 96%
2. Soul Calibur, Dreamcast, 96%
3. Super Mario 64, Nintendo 64, 96%
4. Wave Race 64, Nintendo 64, 92%
5. SSX, PlayStation 2, 91%
6. NFL 2k, Dreamcast, 91%
7. Call of Duty 2, Xbox 360, 90%
8. Star Wars: Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader, GameCube, 90%
9. Super Smash Bros. Melee, GameCube, 90%
10. Madden NFL 2001, PlayStation 2, 90%
    
11. Madden NFL 2002, GameCube (!!), 90%

Because someone will ask: 3 for Microsoft, 1 for Sega, 2 for Sony, and 5 for Nintendo.

The bottom 9 on the list:

1. Eternal Ring, PlayStation 2, 57%
2. Mortal Kombat Gold, Dreamcast, 56%
3. Orphen: Scion of Sorcery, PlayStation 2, 54%
4. Arctic Thunder, Xbox, 54%
5. Cruis'n USA, Nintendo 64, 54%
6. Mortal Kombat Trilogy, Nintendo 64, 54%
7. Evergrace, PlayStation 2, 52%
8. ESPN Extreme Games, PSOne, 50%
9. Total Eclipse Turbo, PSOne, 48%
   

And the count: 1 for Microsoft, 1 for Sega, 5 for Sony, and 2 for Nintendo. It is also worth noting that Street Fighter: The Movie, Kileak - The DNA Imperative, and Power Server 3D Tennis (all for the PSOne) didn't make the cut on GameRankings (too few reviews). I suspect at least one of these might have made the bottom of the list.

I don't have anything else to add, but I suppose others might have opinions. If you want to look at the data for yourself, here is a CSV file you can load into your favorite spreadsheet.

Labels: data, graphs, microsoft, nintendo, xbox360

--jvm at 09:16

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Media consolidation...or not

Update: Revised data is now available in a newer post.

I was doing some number crunching recently on system launches and Next-Gen.biz offered to put some of them up on their site. That post will run over there tomorrow [it is now up, click here], and I'll be posting some auxiliary results that complement that post here. In the meantime, I want to show a related graph that shows how many more voices have joined the videogame media in the past decade. (In case you're coming here from the nod we got in this week's Next-Gen.biz podcast, this is the data that the editor, Colin Campbell, mentioned.)

The basic questions: How many outlets (magazines, websites) does GameRankings list which contributed reviews to each PSOne launch game, on average? How many for each launch game on Nintendo 64, Dreamcast, PlayStation 2, GameCube, Xbox, and Xbox 360?

The answers are here (click for full-sized version):
As you can see from this graph, the coverage of these launch games has increased every generation. Since GameRankings probably wasn't around in 1995, that of course limits their data from the early launches. Even if we just look at the PlayStation 2 and newer, there is a clear increase in sites providing reviews of games. When we get to the Xbox 360 an average of almost 65 sites are reviewing each game.

A few points:

• A little of this growth is probably coming from magazines. Since 1995 and 2001 respectively, the Sony and Microsoft systems have added a few dedicated magazines each. Nintendo has always had their own. GameStop has its own publication. I'm sure there are more.
  
• Most growth, however, is coming from websites. Look at all the coverage of Halo: Combat Evolved. There are dozens of sites that I bet you've never heard of. Who was Into Liquid Sky and did they really run for seven years before quitting? Good gravy.
• All of this growth means that it is more difficult for a big name site to dominate the conventional wisdom. It's one thing for IGN to have one of only two reviews for Battle Arena Toshinden on the PSOne, but quite another for it to have one of 58 reviews of Tekken Tag Tournament on the PlayStation 2.
• The big sites will probably always have a jump on the little ones because they get advance copies, get to play previews, and so forth. However, after a week or a month you'll see more sites add to the average score.
• Even with all the extra coverage, it's still the case that big sites can dominate a game's reviews, especially smaller games. Look at It's Mr. Pants for the Game Boy Advance. There are 20 reviews, and at least 11 of them are from big-name sites or magazines. The smaller sites have fewer resources and no doubt have to focus on the big name games to stay relevant.
• I was particularly struck by the Xbox and GameCube numbers. Those systems launched at almost the same time, but the Xbox games were clearly more covered than the GameCube games. Perhaps just because the Xbox was the big story, being Microsoft's first console? Or some other factor?
  

That's it for tonight. I'll have more stuff tomorrow when the other piece goes up on Next-Gen.biz.

Labels: data, graphs, microsoft, nintendo, xbox360

--jvm at 22:58

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History of Console Prices (or: $500 ain't the worst...)

Is the $500 price tag for the crippled PlayStation 3 historically high or low? I did a bit of number crunching to try to put that number in perspective. These graphs tell the story:I've uploaded PDF versions: absolute and relative.

The first shows absolute price and the second shows relative price. Here absolute means the stated price at the time the console went on sale. Relative means what does that price mean in 2006 dollars, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator.

I'm a little busy right now, so I don't have time for commentary. Feel free to supply your own.

Update: Also, yes, I know the $600 PS3 and $400 Xbox 360 should be on there somewhere. I'll do them later. Done. Didn't update the thumbnails, but the full-sized images now show the two choices for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

I got the idea after reading this GamePolitics rant about the antics of Destructoid at E3 2006.

Labels: data, graphs, microsoft, ps3, sony, xbox360

--jvm at 13:38

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EA Slacking on Madden 06?

About 10 months ago Electronic Arts announced its exclusive NFL contract, making its Madden NFL series the only professional football videogame for the next five years. Recent history had shown Sega's series, developed by Visual Concepts, to be a serious competitor to EA's dominant Madden franchise. Conventional wisdom considered this rivalry good for the industry and good for the consumer; the exclusive license ended all that, and EA now competes only with itself.

Regarding the quality of future games, the official line was:

"The onus is on EA to keep making a better game each year ... that's the hurdle you have to clear every year."
-- Jeff Brown, Vice President of Corporate Communications, Electronic Arts

So, is EA living up to its calling?

Bring on the Graphs

To compare, I've collected data from three sources: GameSpot, IGN, and GameRankings. All scores were mapped to a 100-point scale.

Let's see what was going on over at GameSpot for the past few years, on the PlayStation 2:

Ever since it appeared on the PlayStation 2, Sega's series had always rated higher. Madden was maintaining a very respectable score during this period. Then the first year with an exclusive license, and Madden NFL's score takes a dive by more than five points.

Let's look at IGN, again only on the PlayStation 2:

Both series showed fairly consistent improvement over the past five years, with Madden NFL edging ahead slightly for the 2004 and 2005 seasons. As with GameSpot, however, the review score took more than a five point dive this year.

Only two sites does not a trend make, but we might be able to get an idea of what's going on across the board by looking at GameRankings averages, again only on the PlayStation 2:

It looks like that five-point drop holds, even when we consider how dozens of sites reviewed EA's Madden NFL series. Given the data on this graph, one certainly wonders how NFL 2k6 might have fared.

To compare, I've also done the same graphs for the Xbox versions of these games, shown below. The key feature here is that the same five-point (or more) drop appears to be consistent across the board.



What does it all mean?

It would be convenient to say that EA has already taken advantage of its exclusive license and stopped pushing the Madden developers to produce an ever-better product. However, the graphs above don't provide definitive proof of that.

And don't forget: Madden NFL basically dropped from being a great game to a very good game. This isn't like EA dropped the ball completely. Perhaps we'll know next year if this is the new standard level for Madden NFL.

It could just be that EA's developers had an off year, and the timing happened to conincide with the first year they had no competition. It could be that, measured against itself, Madden NFL doesn't improve enough each year to justify an ever higher score. That is, having competition made it easier to laud the improvements, big and small, that EA put into each new season's game. Frankly, I'd like for someone who has access to real sales data to investigate a bit, and let us in on just what the ramifications are of a huge market like professional football being dominated by one company.

In lieu of that, we do have some recent news reports to guide us.

At the beginning of October 2005, UBS Investment Research predicted that total software sales would be down this year, some from the loss of a competitor in the NFL football game market. Just two weeks later the September 2005 sales results are in and we find total sales down by 25% while Madden takes the number one spot for the second month in a row. In short, while the rest of the market is sluggish, EA continues to reap tremendous profits.

Back in December 2004 an analyst commented to GameSpot:

I really respect [Electronic Arts], but the consumer really loses [with this exclusivity deal]... EA is both evil and really smart.

With EA raking in the dough in a down market with a game that's reviewing poorly compared to last year, the wisdom of this statement seems undeniable.

Labels: data, graphs

--jvm at 21:21

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