14 DAY TRIAL // Electronic Arts is one of the biggest gaming companies out there, having achieved huge profit in the last period of time. This is largely due to the fact that it owns quite a lot of studios developing games on a franchise system, which means that there will always be a fan base for the next Need For Speed game, for example.
Without a doubt, one of the most profitable labels of EA is the Sports one, which releases new titles every year, each of them met with huge anticipation from the big number of sports fans out there. Madden, FIFA or other series set new records in terms of sales and profitability every year. While these have sold very well for the PC, the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles, the versions made for the Wii gaming device haven't done so well.
For example, the newest Madden NFL game has sold over 2 million copies in the US on the major consoles, but has barely moved 100,000 units for the Wii. Peter Moore, the president of the EA Sports label, recently talked about this issue and declared that marketing sports games for the Wii is a difficult task. He motivated his statement by the fact that Wii owners already get the Wii Sports pack bundled with the console, and that might be enough for a lot of them.
“The challenge we face is that that consumer gets ‘Wii Sports‘ right out of the box and that’s a sports experience that’s good enough for a lot of people. That is a challenge for us at times. We’re going to keep pounding away. We know what we were doing wrong. The bottom line is we knew what we weren’t doing right. We’ve corrected that. We’re seeing progress. Is it easy? No. Will we ever see attach rates for authentic sports games, for licensed sports games, on the Wii to the same we see on 360 or PS3? Probably not in this cycle. Are we going to see continued growth of both? Absolutely.”
These are very solid arguments from the president of the sports division of EA. He added that a lot of homes own multiple consoles, and that people are more attracted to buying the game for the powerful ones in order to experience a more solid experience.
All in all, the Wii, with its high sales rate, is a very attractive platform and EA won't let it go unexploited. We just might get to see new sports titles custom made for the small white console.