EA has to be pretty happy that it is able to crow about the fact that the new Madden NFL 09 title was able to generate almost $134 million in sales just in the first month of release.

Many analysts who either previewed the game prior to release or reviewed the game at release suggested that the latest version of Madden would not generate the kind of sales that EA was expecting due to the fact that it was not largely different over the previous years’ version. It continues to be a major challenge for studios to evolve sports titles over the previous years’ version.

EA says that Madden NFL 09 is already six percent ahead of sales for the same first month period over last years’ version of the game. EA, however, has faced less competition in recent years due to the fact that it has an exclusive license with the NFL. Take-Two, which also offers a football title that features retired pros but lacks the NFL license, did not opt to release a version of the title this year due to poor sales last year.