17th year without a PC release

Sony revealed that their AAA ports cost 1-2 millions only to port to PC. Some games only 500k. It's nothing. Some people are living in their bubble which is frozen in time somewhere in mid 2000's. PC is the biggest market and every company realized that and trying their best to use the opportunity. Literally nobody except nintendo (for obvious reasons) wants console exclusives anymore. Besides we have an example and EA is still doing it. NFL only sold ~150k copies on steam. And it's still profitable. NHL wouldn't sell less since there's interest in it in multiple countries and regions.

People making it seem like EA has to rebuild the game from the ground up to get it to run on PC. 

1. The game is built on PC and ported to Xbox/Playstation
2. The 8000 person survey is almost a decade old survey for people actively asking for a PC release. 
3. Madden on PC just recently got crossplay on a true next gen on PC after rough sales without these features. Madden as a whole has been in decline due to stagnant development over the years.
4.  The true cost to port NHL to PC is in servers not development. 

Most game engines i.e. Unreal Engine have the ability to compile and test a game within engine. It's a feature that's been in Game Engines for decades. I believe Unreal Engine 3 had this. I know for sure Unreal Engine 4 has this. Hell even the free to use Unity has this ability. Frostbite 100% has this ability in 2025 which means the game is already playable on PC via the dev team in engine. To go further.....most engines have the ability to port games at the click of a button to a platform and game engines attempt to compile the game for the targeted device. That being said it's not a perfect system and does require some work in code, optimization. This is light work for a dev team were talking a few weeks of work at most a month. This is how indie games get there games ported to PC/Xbox/Playstation/Switch. 

At time of writing:

Madden 24 on PC has 143 concurrent players on a Tuesday at 1pm EST. Sold 283K Copies

Madden 25 on PC has 718 concurrent players on a Tuesday at 1pm EST Sold like crap because was same game. 

Madden 26 isn't disclosing concurrent players on Steam charts due to being in Early Access. 

This is just on Steam.....

Hockey is more popular as a global sport then Football. If they added in the KHL and European leagues to the game this game could outsell Madden as it can reach many more markets. Heck rebrand the game.....EA Sports Ice Hockey (Insert Year). This would have been the perfect year to do this change due to the winter olympics and olympic break in the NHL schedule

To be successful on PC NHL needs to do this:

• KHL/Euro leagues added along with transfer portal for NHL/KHL/Euro leagues implemented into Franchise/Be A Pro
• Release the same game as Xbox/Playstation with crossplay. No compromises.

NHL has been declining in sales for years. I've waited in World of Chel Matchaking for 10+ minutes only to have to research. At times it has taken me up to 30 minutes looking for a game. The NHL game as a model needs an overhaul. EA should hedge their bets and make this a global ice hockey release that could perform closer to FIFA in sales (will still lag behind FIFA in sales) but certainly beat out Madden's annual sales and concurrent players. 

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk........