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Madden NFL 21 extends franchise’s 21-year bestseller streak

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Another year, another chart-topping launch for the Madden NFL franchise.

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Madden NFL 21

was the top-selling game last month and is already the sixth bestselling game of the year, NPD reported on Monday. The game is the 21st consecutive Madden franchise launch to have topped the bestselling game chart during its respective launch month. NPD didn’t release sales figures for the game but said Madden NFL 21 secured “double-digit percentage dollar sales growth” compared to last year’s Madden NFL 20.

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But Madden NFL 21 wasn’t the only EA Sports hit last month. The studio’s other August launch,

UFC 4

, landed behind Madden NFL 21 as the second best-selling game last month. According to NPD, the title also secured the franchise’s highest monthly sales number.

Activision’s

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

 and Sony’s

Ghost of Tsushima

 landed in the third and fourth spots, respectively.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons

 rounded out the top five.

All told, Americans bought $2.9 billion in video game software and associated content, like DLC, last month. That was up from the $2.1 billion spent last August.

NPD’s data looks at both physical and digital sales across the U.S. The company collects the information on video game consoles, games, and accessories and reports its findings each month.

Although the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 will launch in November, gamers didn’t show any signs of slowing their hardware spending last month, either. They spent $229 million on game hardware in August, up 37% compared to the $167 million they spent in August 2019. Nintendo’s Switch led the hardware charge last month and secured a record-breaking August. NPD didn’t say how many Switch units Nintendo sold last month but said sales more than doubled last August’s tally.

It was a similarly strong month for accessories, NPD reported on Monday. American consumers spent $166 million on accessories, including controllers, steering wheels, and headsets, last month, a 42% gain over the same period last year.

Sony’s DualShock 4 Wireless Controller

was the top-selling accessory last month, topping July’s best-seller, the

Xbox Elite Series 2 Wireless Controller

.

Logitech’s G920

 was the best-selling steering wheel last month and the

Turtle Beach Xbox One Ear Force Recon 70

 was the August leader in headsets.

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Don Reisinger
Don Reisinger
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Don Reisinger is a freelance technology, video game, and entertainment journalist. He has been writing about the world of…
Madden NFL 23’s development was somber and self-aware
This mid-air hit is an example of one of Madden NFL 23's new disruptive FieldSense animations.

While EA's Madden football games often top sales charts every year, those sales haven't reflected quality. The critical consensus on the series has been on the decline in recent years, and Madden NFL 22 was riddled with bugs that hampered the experience. Thankfully, the developers are aware of Madden's flaws and trying to improve its signature gameplay with Madden NFL 23.
Madden 23 Official Reveal Trailer
Speaking to Digital Trends, Executive Producer of Gameplay Aaron McHardy painted a picture of a more somber and reflective development of Madden NFL 23 as EA Tiburon mourned rthe passing of series namesake John Madden and tried to make up for the franchise's past failures. While Digital Trends hasn't gone hands-on with the game yet, McHardy highlights that Madden NFL 23 will address many issues fans have thanks to a plethora of bug fixes and a new suite of features called FieldSENSE that touches every part of the experience.
"The investment in FieldSENSE, bug fixes, and gameplay was so big because we know FieldSENSE hits whether you're playing Franchise, Ultimate Team, The Yard, or a quick match with a friend on your couch," McHardy tells Digital Trends. "It's exciting because it hits every part of the game, every mode you're playing. We feel like anyone who plays Madden NFL 23 can really feel something new and different in the game this year."
Check out our Summer Gaming Marathon hub
Exterminating bugs
Before the team could make Madden NFL 23's gameplay better, they had to fix what was broken already. The past few Madden titles have all been riddled with bugs, and the situation got worse than ever with Madden NFL 22. The annual release schedule and pandemic had finally caught up to EA Tiburon's game quality. McHardy outlined the steps the developers are taking to ensure it (hopefully) doesn't happen again.
"We looked at how we developed the game and scoured the internet, and actually got our QA department to, within our dev tools, log every complaint that we could find to track them," McHardy explains. "Where possible, we'd go in and analyze that to figure out what the actual issue was that was causing someone to complain. If there was a video, we put it in our database, and if it was a general complaint about an area of our game, we'd gather them all together and figure out what all the issues are."
"We are hyperfocused on making the most polished game that we can."

This process was thorough, as the developers ended up with a list of "hundreds" of bugs and issues that EA Tiburon could improve. The team then fixed some issues as part of Madden NFL 22's live-service updates and took anything they couldn't fix into account when planning Madden NFL 23's development.
"In the way that we plan new features every year, we were also planning fixes for all of those bugs to make sure that we fixed them and also have time left to catch new ones we are creating," he said. "Polish was a big thing for us on the team this year, so while there are still some bugs because we aren't finished, we feel like the game is already in a better position this year than it was at this time last year. We are hyperfocused on making the most polished game that we can."
We won't know for sure whether or not this will all really pan out until the game is in our hands this August, but it seems like EA knows where it messed up and wants to do better.
Sensible changes

Read more
The history of the Madden Curse
John Madden bursts through the cover of Madden NFL 23: All Madden Edition.

More than 20 years into the iconic franchise's history, there's almost no escaping the Madden Curse. Since Garrison Hearst broke his ankle in 1998 shortly after appearing on the cover of Madden NFL 99, most of the players who starred on the game's cover have suffered an injury the following season. Of the 22 players who have been selected to grace the cover of Madden games, 16 have had troubling or abruptly shortened seasons following their cover debut -- including several who suffered season-ending injuries shortly after their game hit shelves.

EA Sports continues to dismiss any serious talk of a curse hovering over its wildly successful franchise and attributed the rash of injuries and other negative, post-cover issues to an athlete's natural regression after a season of peak performance. They're probably right -- but Madden NFL 21 gave us another chance to test the curse. Lamar Jackson seemingly passed the test, but the injury bug plagued the Ravens backfield a season later in the form of season-ending injuries to all their running backs.

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Madden NFL 23’s ‘no-brainer’ cover star is John Madden
John Madden bursts through the cover of Madden NFL 23: All Madden Edition.

EA has confirmed rumors that Coach John Madden will be the cover star of Madden NFL 23. 
John Madden, who had a long career as both the coach of the Oakland Raiders and a football analyst, died in December 2021. EA is honoring Madden -- the namesake and inspiration behind its highly successful football game franchise -- by renaming a recently renovated field at its Redwood Shores headquarters to the "John Madden Field" and putting him on the cover of Madden NFL 23. There will be three unique covers, including one by artist Chuck Styles for the digital-exclusive Madden NFL 23 All-Madden Edition.

Speaking to Digital Trends, executive producer Aaron McHardy said that EA typically looks at the most exciting and Madden brand-aligned athletes in the NFL when choosing a cover star. But he says there wasn't much of a debate about who would headline the next game after the team learned of Madden's death.
"I don't even think there were discussions as everybody just arrived at the fact that he's going back on the cover because we have to honor him in the best way we possibly can," McHardy said. "It's been so long since he was on the cover of the game, but the game has got his name on it every single year, so we wanted to do everything we could to honor the legend like he is, and it was a no-brainer to put him on the cover." 
Madden is not just being honored on the cover. The first thing players will experience when booting up Madden NFL 23 is a fictional game where two versions of Madden are facing off against each other with all-star teams of athletes in the 1970s Oakland Coliseum. This game will even include real voice clips from Madden, remastered just for this experience. McHardy also believes Madden's influence can be felt outside of that opening game because his death encouraged the development team to work harder. 
"I didn't have the pleasure of speaking with him, but I know a lot of the guys on the team did." McHardy continued. "He was invested in making sure that our game was the most authentic 11v11 football game that it could be. It was obviously a sad and somber moment to lose someone like Coach Madden, but it really energized the team in a way this year to think about our features, what we're building, and how we can honor that legacy." Madden NFL 23 will be released for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S later this year. 

Read more