Boom! Madden 12 Available Three Days Earlier
(SPORTS TECHNOLOGY)
The hard-hitting and extremely popular sports video game, Madden, will be released in digital format three days in advance for die-hard Madden players. Madden 12 is scheduled to be released on August 30, but EA Sports will release the video game on April 27 for those gamers willing to pay for an EA Sports Season Ticket.
The EA Sports Season Ticket is an attempt by EA Sports to increase sales. Madden gamers that sign up for the one-year subscription, at a cost of $24.95 per year, will be able to download a digital version of Madden 12 three days in advance of the hard copy. Once the hard copy is released in stores, the digital version will be removed.
“This will let us deepen our relationship with [our] most important customers, and we can communicate more directly with them,” said Peter Moore, president of EA Sports. “But it should also help us covert more of them to a sale.”
The purpose of the EA Sports Season Ticket is to get Madden gamers to play and possibly buy other EA Sports video games. The pre-release service will not only be for Madden 12, but for four other games including FIFA Soccer 12, NHL 12, NCAA Football 13, and Tiger Woods 13. Therefore, like Madden, gamers can experiment with the digital versions of these EA games for three days.
“Unlike a lot of publishers we have synergies between our franchises,” said Moore. “If you’re a sports fan and like Madden, you probably like hockey or soccer or golf.”
Madden is EA Sports’ most popular franchise, so EA Sports is hoping that Madden, along with the EA Sports Season Ticket, will help to increase sales of their other games.
The company has an attach rate of 1.36, which means the average EA Sports gamer buys 1.36 games that EA Sports sells. Moore wants the attach rate to reach 2, therefore he needs the season ticket service to increase the exposure of the other EA games.
“It’s a way to get more people to sample the games,” said Moore.
With its release a couple weeks before the NFL season, Madden 12 will have several new features. All 32 NFL teams will have their own unique introductions, while gamers will be able to create their own playbooks. In addition, EA Sports has completely changed Franchise Mode and has introduced Dynamic Player Performance, which will make player ratings change from week-to-week.
Conor Boland is a TMCnet editorial assistant, contributing news items and feature articles on a variety of communications and technology topics. To read more of Conor's articles, please visit his columnist page.
