17th year without a PC release

The viewership of NFL and the actual amount of players on madden NFL are two completely different things and the only direct correlation is that they both are for the NFL, the overall viewership of the NFL does not reflect how many people will play madden on PC and if you think you can make a accurate number out of that then you are obviously high. By doing it that way you deal in probability not certainty, although nothing will be absolute certainty, a survey would be more accurate. Like many want is an official EA poll or survey directly for releasing NHL on PC, a way to voice their concerns or opinions in a way that actually matters and will be used in a decision. That way they can obtain the numbers and determine cost and if it would turn a profit. 

But the facts are simple, thousands of people have wanted NHL to come to PC, enough that roughly 8700 people went out of their way to sign an unofficial, unannounced petition, those are just the people that went out of their way to look for a petition, there are countless others who lost hope in voicing their opinion or their want for NHL to return to PC because EA never publicly addressed the issue and more.

Let’s also not forget that the NHL has an international market as nearly 30% of the players are from outside of North America and roughly 10-12 different countries have Olympic ice hockey teams, IIHF has 84 member countries, whereas the NFL isn’t exactly associated with the olympics at all, being so the closest thing to it is “5v5 flag football” in the Olympics instead of the NFLs 11v11 full contact. In a North American market the NFL will dominate but internationally hockey is wildly more known and popular. I’ll also say this because the EA game doesn’t just include NHL teams but also includes teams on the IIHF level and lower international leagues.

As I mentioned before, NHL is built on frostbite, frostbite 3.0 to be specific which is tailored for cross-platform play including windows, switch, Xbox and PlayStation which makes a port to windows much easier and cheaper than a game that isn’t designed for windows OS at all, I’m not saying it would be free of charge or a “push of a button”, I’d say the bigger question is how much it would cost to modify an anti-cheat used on FC or NFL to protect PC players on NHL, as well as if they want to allow or disallow mods, and before anyone says anything, cheating and modding are two completely different things. I also mentioned that literally every game in modern day is designed using a PC and it is highly more than likely that a PC version of NHL exists for the NHL developers. You can research this for yourself, I’d be willing to bet you would arrive at the same conclusion that a development version already exists on PC given modern development standards.

Additionally NHL is filled with micro transactions, if the estimated profit from game sales alone is low, EA will definitely earn the profits from their micro transactions. Hell even sales may not even be bad, I’ve asked a few friends if they’d buy both a PC version and console version and they said yes, one would be for offline typically for on the road or for any case where they could bring their console but not their PC. I’m not saying this is the case for everyone but there will be people that would do this, possibly myself included if I find myself in that position. But it’s obvious there is a lot of profit earned off of micro transactions and this isn’t specific to EA, most games that offer this typically earn a big buck. Who knows, maybe EA would earn even more on micro transactions if people didn’t need to spend money on subscriptions to play online either?

Overall I’d say the minimum EA should give the PC community is an official survey that is properly advertised so it reaches most potential customers, even some publicity would be earned from smaller news companies which would cover such a thing as each year you can find articles from various independent companies about how NHL isn’t coming to PC or articles that underscore this. This way EA can obtain actual feedback directly related to the release of a PC version and their people who “run the numbers” can actually accurately determine if it is feasible and would result in a profit.

If EA actually conducts a survey directly for this and the result turns out to be against the release, genuinely I would respect and live with the decision if it’s based on actual data that is accurate and collected from the community and potential customers for NHL, not some survey that collects information for every EA game. I may disagree with it if that happens but we would have an official decision based on the communities wants.