Madden NFL 21 Sales Figures Seemingly Unaffected by Negative Reviews

The early sales figures for Madden NFL 21 are in, and they may come as something of a surprise to those who felt that this year’s installment represents the series at its absolute worst.

While EA hasn’t revealed exactly how many copies of Madden NFL 21 have been sold thus far, a report by the NPD group makes it clear that the game is already a tremendous success. It’s not too surprising to learn that Madden NFL 21 was the best-selling game of August, but it is shocking to hear that this year’s installment reached “double-digit percentage dollar sales growth compared to the release month of Madden NFL 20.” Furthermore, Madden NFL 21 has already debuted as the 6th best-selling game of 2020 thus far.

Sales figures aside, additional information revealed by EA suggests that fans are playing Madden NFL 21 more than they have played recent franchise installments.

“After the most successful year in franchise history, fans are now playing more Madden than ever before. In the last weeks, players have shown their passion for Madden with a lot of great feedback and stellar engagement in Madden NFL 21,” says Seann Graddy, Executive Producer, Madden NFL. “We truly appreciate the fans who have been playing Madden NFL 21 and we are excited to bring new improvements, content, and experiences with our live service updates throughout the year.”

A subsequently released stat sheet suggests that 49% more Madden NFL 21 games have been played than Madden NFL 20 games were played in the same time frame last year. It’s also been noted that Madden NFL 21‘s new arcade-like mode, The Yard, has over 17 million games played thus far. Assuming all of these figures are relatively accurate, then it really does seem like people are playing Madden more than ever before.

Again, that may come as a shock to many who have heard that Madden NFL 21 is one of the lowest-rated games in franchise history across both user and critic score. It’s easy enough to suggest that the events of 2020 have inspired Madden fans to jump at the chance to dive into this yearly installment, but the idea that they’ve continued to play the game thus far in record numbers would tend to suggest that the Madden series is close to bullet-proof.

So while we all hope that an incoming influx of additional football games may inspire EA to right some of the Madden franchise’s recent wrongs, the fact of the matter is that Madden NFL 21 is already a hit.