Worries over possible Madden franchise fatigue seem to be unfounded so far. In its first day on the North American market, Madden NFL 13 sold a record number of HD copies for the series: 900,000 units at retail.
EA Sports also points out that sell-through during the game's first 24 hours after shipping is up by 7 percent compared to Madden NFL 12, and that it's also set a day-one online usage record with a big jump in peak simultaneous players.
For annual video game series, especially for sports titles where mechanics and features can remain mostly unchanged from year-to-year, there are sometimes fears that players will not feel compelled to pick up the latest releases because they're already satisfied with -- or burned out by -- the previous entry.
Madden NFL 13 sought to avoid that problem by introducing major features, such as its new Infinity Engine that's meant to offer more realistic physics and collisions. Critics have praised the additions, and EA Sports says it's seen the biggest single-year raise in review scores for its franchises in four years.
The last Madden NFL release also sold more copies early on than its predecessor (up by 10 percent), and pushed 1.4 million units across all consoles in its first week. Madden NFL 12 went on to sell more than 3 million copies around the world.
Don't get me wrong, but Football itself has been around for quite a while and has minor if any changes year to year, yet people still like to watch it. I would expect that pattern to translate at least somewhat into the games that go along with it. These annual sports releases by EA Sports are a genre with their own market and have somewhat less overlap than many other video game genres.
Edit: Typo