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Re:EA to buy Dirt Rally-maker Codemasters for £1B by Hamuko on Monday December 14, 2020 @10:16AM (#25418462)
They are at least publishing some nicher titles with EA Originals. I'm also not entirely convinced that DiRT is more niche than for example Madden, which is a series of sports games about a sport that is really only popular in one country.
Re:EA to buy Dirt Rally-maker Codemasters for £1B by dagw on Monday December 14, 2020 @10:27AM (#25418602)
I'm also not entirely convinced that DiRT is more niche than for example Madden

Madden is one of the better selling game franchise of all time with over 130 million copies sold. Despite this years Madden game being by far the worst reviewed Madden game in ages, it's still the 3rd highest selling game this year.

Re:EA to buy Dirt Rally-maker Codemasters for £1B by Hamuko on Monday December 14, 2020 @10:34AM (#25418689)
>it's still the 3rd highest selling game this year

Globally or in the US?

Re:EA to buy Dirt Rally-maker Codemasters for £1B by dagw on Monday December 14, 2020 @10:47AM (#25418836)
Sorry, you're right. Globally It appears to be the 8th best selling console game this year. But more importantly it consistently sells those sort of numbers every single year without fail. Far from a niche game (or at least its a very popular and extremely profitable niche).
Re:EA to buy Dirt Rally-maker Codemasters for £1B by Throwaway1771 on Monday December 14, 2020 @10:50AM (#25418878)
In the total global videogame market.

So, yes, mostly in the US.

Re:EA to buy Dirt Rally-maker Codemasters for £1B by munificent on Monday December 14, 2020 @01:02PM (#25420850)
> I'm also not entirely convinced that DiRT is more niche than for example Madden

I used to work on Madden. Maybe this is non-obvious if you're not in the US, but it is hard to understate what a monumental cash cow that product is. It is like Excel is to Microsoft. It's a veritable firehose of money.

> really only popular in one country.

Sure, but that country has the third largest population in the world, and a greater GDP than the next two countries combined.

Re:EA to buy Dirt Rally-maker Codemasters for £1B by exDM69 on Monday December 14, 2020 @12:09PM (#25419963)
> DiRT is more niche than for example Madden,

Dirt Rally, the rally sim, definitely is a smaller niche and the only one of its genre still under active development.

The rest of the Dirt series, which don't AFAIK share the physics engine with Dirt Rally, is much more mainstream.

Although I can't guess what the market size is for a racing game these days.