If they only sold EA Sports’ Madden NFL 10 in a single underground opium den in Burma, the game would still sell upwards of 3 million copies.  So why do they feel the need to coerce people to buy it with special offers?  Don’t get me wrong; I like special offers as much as the next guy, but EA really doesn’t need to do these.  For example, Sports Illustrated has teamed up with EA to bring us a pretty sweet offer; sign up for Sports Illustrated, get Madden 10 for free.

New subscribers will get 28 weekly issues of SI, along with a copy of Madden for either the Xbox 360, PS3, PSP, PS2 or Wii, for $49.99.  Also included is an NFL Films Madden documentary DVD.  The only real downside is that SI asks you to wait 6-8 weeks for delivery of the game, and for most players, that’s just too long to wait.

So that’s 50 bucks for 28 weeks of a magazine and a 60 dollar game.  Not a bad deal; does this mean that if I just want the magazines, they’ll cost -$10?  Probably not.  Regardless, I’m not a midnight launch kind of guy when it comes to Madden, so I signed up.  I’ll let you all know when my copy comes in.