An interesting interview with the Executive Vice President of EA Sports talking about their existing games and noting the contribution of independent publishers supporting minority sports eg NRL video game etc

rlhttp://m.uk.ign.com/articles/2012/11/26/ea-sports-vp-on-cricket-fifa-and-creating-new-benchmarksrl

Not much chance of a big budget RL game though.

Well no. It'll only shift a few 100 units in the north of England. Maybe a few 1000 units down under.

Not worth the money it'd cost to make.

Them figures are just laughable

Don't talk wet.

Pretty sure I've seen the RL game in the top 5 pre-ordered games. So think your units are way off.

However the guy in the article makes a fair point. EA Sports have an excellent reputation for making quality games. They spend millions on the development of the games because they will get millions back in revenue.

Although RL is having healthy sales in England, OZ & NZ, it's not going to bring in the money that the likes of FIFA , NFL will bring in.

Unfortunately that means less money spent on the development of an RL game which means a less quality product, which from EA's point of view affects their reputation.

see you say that, and NFL was considered a minority sport over here in the early 90's, it was with John MAdden on the megadrive that created the interest in it, to the point where its strangely hugely popular.

Same could also be said of the NHL games in the same era.

True but NFL is pretty big in America. That's a huge market.

Quote: roofaldo2 "Well no. It'll only shift a few 100 units in the north of England. Maybe a few 1000 units down under. Not worth the money it'd cost to make.'" Well it's currently the number 1 pre ordered game for the xbox on play.com www.play.com/Games/Xbox360/6-/PreOrderChart.html This is surprising when you look at some of the games it's beating

Quote: roofaldo2 "Well no. It'll only shift a few 100 units in the north of England. Maybe a few 1000 units down under. Not worth the money it'd cost to make.'" Well it's currently the number 1 pre ordered game for the xbox on play.com www.play.com/Games/Xbox360/6-/PreOrderChart.html This is surprising when you look at some of the games it's beating

I'd be interested to see exactly how many order's that play has for that game.

I'd not be surprised if the number of pre-orders and the number of total sales wasn't that much different.

I think it was the channel 4 coverage, and people being stupid traitors who lap anything up if it's from america even if we have something way way better over here.

Not that Madden wasn't a good game. It didn't have adverts every 7 seconds.

Quote: roofaldo2 "I'd be interested to see exactly how many order's that play has for that game. I'd not be surprised if the number of pre-orders and the number of total sales wasn't that much different.'" ringsidereport.com/?p=25296 wouldnt be able to give you the total pre order numbers but going off this release it sounds as if it is going to do a fair few sales.

Quote: roofaldo2 "I'd be interested to see exactly how many order's that play has for that game. I'd not be surprised if the number of pre-orders and the number of total sales wasn't that much different.'" ringsidereport.com/?p=25296 wouldnt be able to give you the total pre order numbers but going off this release it sounds as if it is going to do a fair few sales.

Generally people outside rl completely underestimate its popularity. Bad PR.

Know this is an old thread now but didn't some game stores open at midnight for it in places like Warrington and Wigan? Surely there was a lot of Pre-orders/sales if that happened.

I think EA would sell a lot if they made it and it would help the sport. As a few have pointed out the games helped NFLs popularity here. I had never watched NFL and I picked up an older madden a year or 2 ago for about £1 in CeX and used it to learn the sport and it got me interested. A RL game could do the same for our sport if someone like EA got involved. The huge strides that the NRL are taking might make that happen. I know that we are a tiny league now in comparison but if we get a great game on the back of the NRLs success then who are we to complain?

I don't get why they're worried. I have built games using an EA F1 Engine in the past and the engine they used in Rugby 08 was great so they'd only need to modernise that and modify it to RL not Union and boom sorted, smashing game relatively low costs.

Get it sorted then, lol