Pre-orders for EA Sports' Madden NFL 09 have been showing improvement following sluggish recent performance, Stern Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia said in an investor note on Thursday.

Stern Agee's retail checks showed that Madden pre-orders are still down, but by 20 percent, compared to being down 30 percent a month ago.

Bhatia called the improvement "meaningful," adding, "...We believe pre orders in the most recent week were up double-digits year-over-year for the one week period."

The analyst expects the new Madden, releasing in less than one week, will sell 10 percent less than last year. However, he said there's "potential that actual sell through could be flat [year-on-year], especially given the same appears to be true for NCAA Football 09 (i.e. pre-orders down but sell through flat)."

EA Sports boss Peter Moore recently acknowledged lower pre-orders for the company's football franchises, but said recent trends show that pre-orders aren't wholly indicative of actual sales performance.

"NCAA [Football '09] has taught us a couple of lessons: That pre-orders are not quite the key indicator that they may have been in the past and secondly, they shouldn't be seen as being any kind of sales indicator in the first couple of weeks," he said during a July earnings call.

Nevertheless, any improvement in pre-orders is welcome news for EA stockholders.

"Given the magnitude and the importance of the Madden franchise for [EA], we naturally view this as an incremental positive for the stock," Bhatia added.