Re: NHL 25 for PC

@ZorisX 

We're not posting a document detailing our research. I think the community is failing to understand just how much it costs to support the game on PC. It's not a situation where we just copy and paste the game to PC and call it a day. There's so much more involved. Again, if it were going to be as popular as everything thinks, I'm sure w would have put a team in place to make this happen. This isn't FC or Madden. Which are not the niche sports that hockey is. 

https://gameworldobserver.com/2023/05/22/tape-to-tape-revenue-marketing-steam-hockey-game

What about a game like Tape To Tape; A hockey game that hit Steam and made $600k?  A quick google search estimates that porting a console game to PC can take anywhere from $5k to $100k. Even if worse case scenario it takes the $100k, if a small indie developer can pull in $600k just from existing on Steam, a large AAA developer like EA with an actual marketing department should be able to pull in more than that; Right?

Network engineer and Cloud Admin, I'm not completely naive to the efforts and costs of porting. Either way, it's not about me. 

It's about a clear desire on our side vs market research that was done by EA. 

@669da90c05730fe3 

This is what I'm talking about when I say it's more than just porting the game. For one, there's NHL licensing to consider. Which, is obviously not cheap. Yes, we have it for the console versions, but I imagine that would need to be expanded to cover PC. We also have to expand our server support and build in cross-play. Again, this isn't a quick and easy process. We also have to have support in place to cover technical, account and purchasing issues as well as having a team dedicated to bug fixing. The PC version needs to support a myriad of configurations which is going to require a heavy amount of testing. 600k is probably a great return for an indie studio. I just don't see that being enough to cover the cost of releasing a PC version. As I've said many times, it's significantly higher than what everyone is assuming.

Then don't give us the opportunity to assume;  Share some data... 

I can't even find the simple answer of how many copies of NHL 23 or NHL 24 EA has sold.  Can you share something as simple as that for starters?

Agreed, 

Please share some information that can help us understand the justifications as well, what qualifications are needed to consider the delivery of the product to the platform..

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@669da90c05730fe3 wrote:

Then don't give us the opportunity to assume;  Share some data... 

I can't even find the simple answer of how many copies of NHL 23 or NHL 24 EA has sold.  Can you share something as simple as that for starters?

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I don't have any data I can share. That's not something I'm involved in.

Is there a specific email address or phone extension for someone in marketing analytics that would be privy to that information that you know of?

If i want to attempt to call EA offices, would you suggest main corporate or EA Vancouver?

It would be great to line up some resources if you can't deliver from your end understandingly, we'll see if can get some additional information from one of the HQs

@669da90c05730fe3 

As I mentioned previously, there is no one I can refer you to.

@ZorisX 

Developers/marketing are not available for these conversations.

Okay.... does EA have any feedback surveys or suggestion forms to fillout and submit that you could share a link to here? Marketing may not want to be an active participant in this conversation thread but there's no way any marketing team wouldnt want any feedback from customers.

@669da90c05730fe3 

As I mentioned previously, they are extremely well aware of the feedback. They have seen it here as well as reddit and in any surveys we've done in the past. I also include it in my regular reports. The issue is the very big investment of resources for what would most likely be a relatively small playerbase. It also means diverting work on the console version to get a PC version up and running. I know there is always interest in a PC version. It's just not going to happen until there's a big enough community to support it. Yes, I understand people feel that there would be an instantly huge audience for this game, but chances are excellent, the reality of that is far smaller than anticipated.

Surveys go out from time to time so keep an eye on your email.

Right, I've filled that out before; but, as i recall it was a pretty lengthy questionnaire that was almost all 'Rate 1-5 how you felt about...' questions with only 1 or two sections with very small letter count text boxes for fill-in answers.  So for that, they're only polling the players that played the most recent iteration of the game.  We're trying to poll the PC playerbase that hasnt ever been able to play NHL or has been waiting 20 years to play NHL on PC again to show how large of a player base there really is.

A more targetted poll would be ideal (since people who havent played recent versions arent going to be psyched to answer 20 presentation questions about a game they havent played) but, if that poll is all we can get, is there any issue with us sharing the link in Steam forums and other pc gaming forums outside of EA's existing base?

@669da90c05730fe3 

I believe the surveys are tied to the account they were sent to so I don't think those links can be shared.

Could you help us out by creating an official EA short survey for this question?  Or even just a poll with the prompt of "Would you consider purchasing an EA NHL game if it were on PC"

Those of us that are passionate about this issue will spread the link everywhere PC gamers exist to get as good of data as possible.

Even if EA doesn't share the results of the survey it would make us feel better knowing the actual marketing research on that single question exists beyond just EA looking at threads on Reddit and EA forums.

@669da90c05730fe3 

I'll pass on the feedback, but I doubt that will happen. As I have said many times now, we know there is interest in a PC version. You're welcome to start a petition somewhere if you like and see how many sign it.

It sort of amazes me and is disheartening that company of the size of EA isn't willing to take a calculated risk on this. If it doesn't do well? Okay, sure, discontinue the project.

The indie hockey games, continued love for 2004 and the project 2K Hockey Simulator and still "not viable."  Also a lot of people don't take part in these forums (or any forums for that matter), social media and the likes. 

I guess it's off to wait until 2KHS is ready.

I still haven't seen any surveys but could you atleast add NHL 25 to cloud gaming so i could play with my friends there or something?