Usually this time of year, the gaming industry gets a jolting boost of sales figures from the annual game retail showstopper, Madden NFL 09. But UBS Securities' Ben Schachter has reported otherwise.

When numbers indicating preorders of the popular sports game were predicted as down 30 percent came out recently, investors started to worry about the long-term prognosis of another edition of the best-selling sports game of all time.



Should John Madden worry?

Schachter, who noted that the franchise represents 20-25 percent of Electronic Arts' revenues yearly, said:

"We estimate that Madden 09 unit sales for day 1 were approximately flat on a y/y basis (including pre-orders), up ~5-10% in dollars on higher ASP."

Initial reviews of the game have been great indicators of the game's solid growth in gameplay quality, atlhough sales numbers of the title are still up in the air.

"Importantly, EA achieved its goal of improving Madden quality," said Schachter. "We believe that solid avg Metacritic scores of 86 for Madden NFL 09 on next-gen consoles (vs. 81 and 79 for Madden 08 and 07, respectively) were key drivers of the apparent rebound. Notably, EA's 'All Play' sku for the Wii saw the biggest increase y/y, from 76 to 85 for Madden NFL 09."

"Madden performance is the most important near-term catalyst for ERTS, followed by Spore (Sept 7 release). Bottom line, thus far Madden looks to be okay, but just okay. Strong growth in Sports is still a challenge this yr, leading to concerns about how structural the issue is. Additionally, while Sports growth would be encouraging, we note that new EA Games titles and casual games will also be key drivers for the ERTS story heading into the holiday."

Schachter has maintained a "Neutral" rating on EA's stock with a price target of $52, a near 10 percent increase from today's closing price.