Heaven forbid we're just bored of it.

While AFL games are produced mainly with the Australian market in mind, for some reason the United States thinks their own brand of country-specific football ought to hold great interest for the rest of the world.They're not always wrong, and the Madden franchise is a firm console favourite of many a gamer, but the series is getting on a bit in years and qualifies for much of the same criticism as EA's other sports titles.

Apparently most of us feel they can give this year's iteration a miss, as Madden NFL 10 exhibits worryingly poor sales in its first month.

The game has shifted only 1.7 million units across all platforms since it's release in mid-August, which is apparently not anywhere near enough to meet the heavy investment EA put into hyping the title, according to an email from EA CEO John Riccitiello:

"It is discouraging that one of our highest-rated and best-marketed Madden titles in years is facing strong headwinds,"

Does anybody else find it a bit baffling that the factors he mentions are critical response (notoriously suspect) and marketing? I'm the first to admit that hype sells games, curse it, but these comments seem quite revealing of a long-suspected "throw marketing at it" problem-solving attitude at EA. Why spend money allowing your development team to fix the previous entry's problems and implement exciting new features, when you could just put up some more banner ads?

I can assure you that disappointing launch sales for Madden NFL 10 have nothing to do with the game's PR team, who have been tirelessly spamming any and all news services in the hopes of getting more than a yawn from jaded consumers.

Mr. Riccitiello goes on to comment that increased sales of Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles following recent price cuts might turn the tables for the franchise. Yes, it must be the high price of consoles that's causing consumers to spend all their money on Arkham Asylum, instead.