NCAA Football 14 Demo Proves Successful

Based on the results of the poll posted last week the demo for NCAA Football 14 has proven valuable for consumers who may have been on the fence about a purchase and beneficial for EA Sports in creating some encouraging word-of-mouth in the weeks leading up to release.

A full 50% of the over 4300 respondents cast their vote in the “Encouraged – More likely to buy” column. That is a huge percentage for a poll of this nature. On the flip side the “Less likely to buy” choice was limited to only 5% and that is another really significant result. “No Change – Likely to buy” came in at 22%, “No Change – Unlikely to buy” was 14%, and “No Change – Undecided” finished at 9%. 

Compared to NCAA 13 the poll demonstrates a large swing in the influence provided by the respective demos. One year ago it was 34% (-16%) who were more likely to buy after the NCAA 13 demo and 16% (+11%) were less likely to buy it…and that was coming off just a single disappointing effort rather than the two that NCAA 14 has been faced with overcoming.

Many consumers have seemed to be approaching NCAA 14 in a cautious or skeptical manner – that’s no wonder given that the series has “won” the only undesirable Community Award two straight years – but the demo has seemingly delivered some sense of reassurance that this time things will be different. Whether that translates to an increase in sales or helps them from falling as much as they would have otherwise is unable to be determined however a little positive momentum has to be considered at the very least a step in the right direction.