EA’s Hyped Up ‘Need for Speed’ Hits A Roadblock; Fails To Make It to Even Top-10 Games

Elecronic Arts’ (NYSE:ERTS) highly anticipated racing video game Need for Speed: The Run seems to have fizzled out, failing to make even to the top-10 games of the leading video-gaming charts. While The Run’s trailer and the heavy marketing to promote the game, did evoke a craze amongst the gaming community, but post launch both reviews and sales results have been disappointing. EA competes with other racing video game developers like Take Two Interactive (NASDAQ:TTWO) which develops GTA series and Polyphony Digital, the developer of Gran Turismo series.

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Post Launch, NFS: The Run fails to impress both critics and gamers

Though much was being talked about NFS: The Run after a successful trailer and marketing campaigns, post launch the racing video game has failed to meet the expectations of gaming critics. The run has been criticized for its over focus on the storyline while losing out on gaming details. Additionally the sales results haven’t been impressive too with the game failing to make even to the top-10 gaming charts of sites like www.vgchartz.com and www.eurogamer.net. While the major reason behind the disappointing sales results is the drifting of gamers to other high profile games launched at the same time such as Activision’s Modern Warfare 3, poor ratings from the critics is also making things worse for NFS: The Run.

We currently predict a sale of 4.61 million for  Need for Speed gaming franchise on gaming consoles in 2011, a slight increase over that in 2010. However, we will wait till the holiday sales results to ascertain whether or not any revision is needed for our estimate.

We have a $20.60 price estimate for Electronics Arts, which is inline with its current market price.

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