NFL Head Coach 09 offers a more strategic experience.

JUNE 30, 2008 • A big theme of recent DFC Intelligence research has been platform diversity.  In 2007, four game platforms shipped over 10 million units, the Nintendo DS and Wii and the Sony PSP and PlayStation 2.  The Nintendo DS alone shipped nearly 30 million units.  Notably absent from that list was the Microsoft Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.  However, if you look at most the biggest budget games in development they are almost all being developed for either the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 or both.  Games for the Nintendo DS generally have a much smaller budget.

Regardless of platform, sports games – football games in particular – remain bankable revenue producers. The new DFC Intelligence report, Video Game Genre Forecasting, attempts to forecast expected game sales by platform based on the games’ genre.  This report uses DFC Intelligence forecasts for hardware sales but takes it a step further by matching up expected hardware sales, expected consumer demographic and how sales are forecasted to differ by platform based on the specific features of a game such as licenses, marketing spend etc.

In this report we have created seven different tiers for game sales:

1)    Mega-Hit: Games that sell in the 2 million unit plus range
2)    AAA: Games that sell in the 1 million to 2 million unit range
3)    A: Games that sell in the 750,000 to one million unit range
4)    B: Games that sell in the 500,000 to 750,000 unit range
5)    C: Games that sell in the 250,000 to 500,000 unit range
6)    D: Games that sell in the 100,000 to 250,000 unit range
7)    E: Games that sell under 100,000 units

Needless to say, most titles will fall into the D and E tiers.  However, the real goal is to judge what will make a title standout to reach the upper tiers and how sales are likely to vary by platform.  For this month’s issue we thought we would take a look at the football game genre.  Football is a good introductory genre because it is fairly uncomplicated and dominated by one company, Electronic Arts.  It is also a nice genre to highlight the difference between platforms because the same football game comes out for multiple platforms.

Football used to be a very competitive game genre.  In 2003 and 2004, the ESPN Football brand (2K games from Take-Two and Sega) became a legitimate contender to Madden.   However, in December 2004 EA got five-year exclusive NFL video game rights eliminating any competition in NFL branded football games.  Early this year, that exclusivity was extended to 2012.  In 2005, EA obtained a similar exclusive license to NCAA Football games and Arena Football League games.

Since Electronic Arts signed its exclusive license, no other publisher has had significant sales in football games.  Take-Two Interactive tried to re-enter the football business last year with the release of All-Pro Football 2K8.  This game featured historic football legends, including the infamous O.J. Simpson, which of course raised a controversy.  However, controversy and all, All-Pro Football 2K8 fell firmly in the D tier and no new version has been announced.

When it comes to the biggest title, Madden NFL 09, the Xbox 360 is expected to be the leading platform for sales.  The PlayStation 3 is expected to also have very strong sales that could pick-up with holiday hardware sales.  PlayStation 2 sales are on the decline, but this year Madden is still forecasted to be a big hit.  Last year’s version of Madden on the Wii took advantage of the unique Wii control scheme, but lacked the graphical impact of the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions.  Because graphic realism is such an important part of the appeal of football games, we think that the Wii version of Madden will once again fall slightly short of the versions for other systems.  The same argument on graphics is why the PSP Madden is expected to sell better than the DS version.

NCAA Football 09 is expected to follow similar platform trends when it comes to sales.  However, overall sales will likely be lower across the board.  The Xbox 360 is expected to be the number one platform for NCAA Football 09 and sales for the Xbox 360 could reach the AAA level of over one million units.  Without a license from the NFL or NCAA, almost all football games will fall in the lower C-E tiers for sales.

As mentioned, the football genre is a relatively simple one to analyze because of EA’s dominance.  This will probably not change soon, even though in early June some gamers sued Electronic Arts in U.S. federal court for “blatantly anticompetitive conduct” in locking up exclusive rights to games with the NFL, NCAA and Arena Football League licenses.  Assuming this case goes nowhere, other publishers looking at releasing football games must be realistic in estimating that sales will be toward the lower end.

There has been one exception to EA’s NFL exclusivity, Humongous Entertainment, a division of Atari, published Backyard Football 2008 last year.  This game features licensed teams and players from the NFL, but with the catch that the players are children, the target market for the game.  Clearly EA does not view this as a threat to its Madden series.  The game was not even released for the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 and it is a clear indication of how platform strategy varies by intended audience, even within the same game genre.  Even on the Wii, DS and PS2, future versions of Backyard Football can be expected to fall in the lower tier of sales.