17th year without a PC release

KidShowtime1867 wrote:

But again, there's a lot of 'feedback' here that isn't really feedback and more just an airing of grievances after a loss.

I agree but there is still a lot of quality feedback, which I think gets drowned out by the amount of grievances. But I do see some pretty in depth feedback that gets zero interaction by EA here. What others have touched on here is that there isn't a lot of engagement with all of the feedback, which understandably if Aljo is the only EA rep for their NHL series he can't possibly read and comment on every post.

KidShowtime1867 wrote:

Needs to be more competition in the market, but it's expensive and difficult to make quality games these days.

I agree with this as well, a lack of competition with hockey games likely reduces pressure on EA to innovate or take interest in the communities ideas. Most similar game I can see is 2KHS which is available on pc via patreon (last I checked), graphics are poorer but its something, from what I seen it brings back the broadcast vibes older versions of NHL had which I was a huge fan of. Being honest thats what I enjoyed the most about the older NHL games, just how much depth they went into making the game. Also something EA should change or refresh the community with is new broadcasters, we've had the same play by play dialogue for years and at this rate I can say exactly what Cheryl Pounder or James Cybulski is saying at the same time, its old and needs to be refreshed, even if they would only redo the dialogue every few years I would be happy about that.

KidShowtime1867 wrote:

Nobody is saying the PC market is dead. EA has smart people to analyze markets and they've done the math; there's no ROI on a PC NHL game. You have to uplift so much infrastructure to support a PC release and there's just no market for it on the PC. A few hundred devoted forum members who religiously play PC doesn't equate to real-world market share.

I think this is slept on heavily, you can look at PC games that are available on steam that are nowhere close to EA's NHL and they have tons of downloads and pretty decent active playerbases. Think a couple of the top games I seen was Slapshot Rebound and another called Puck which both are free, both are like first person low-poly hockey games. While I dont disagree that they may have people that run the numbers and do the math, I haven’t personally seen much public-facing outreach from EA about PC interest, so from the community side it feels like the demand has not been meaningfully tested or communicated. If they don't push out a PC version of NHL they should at least run a proper survey of the community to get full feedback. I'll provide some screenshots from the steamdb for the games I mentioned, I highlighted the estimated ownerships. Those numbers make me question whether the PC audience is really as nonexistent as people claim. I do not know EA’s costs, but I think it would be worth EA addressing why that audience is not considered viable. Now I don't know what their console sales are but its not just game sales we are talking about, there are in game transactions as well, and I'm not saying ownership of these steam games will turn into game sales for EA but it also shows there is definitely a big interest for hockey games on PC, Obviously this would not translate 1:1 into EA NHL sales, especially for a full-priced annual title, but just as a rough hypothetical, using those ownership estimates would put potential gross sales somewhere between roughly CDN$37 million and CDN$189 million before accounting for development costs, licensing, support, and other expenses.

KidShowtime1867 wrote:

Why does it matter to you if EA's sales numbers are garbage? I never understood why some people put so much weight into how many copies of the game gets sold. I couldn't care less if EA sold 5,000 copies of the game. All I know is that there's always a ton of people to play against online and it's an active base of really good players. Being concerned about sales numbers just seems to weird to me.

I have an interest in this as well as its the main argument used for defending denying a PC release by most people. A common argument, including one you mentioned, is that EA has likely run the numbers and does not see enough ROI. This is where people including me want some transparency, for me it goes with the timeline of the last PC title as well. its been so long since the games been on PC, we want to see the numbers people refer to that claim does not support a PC title. I understand EA likely won't release those numbers but even a good official explanation as to why a PC title isn't viable from EA would be sufficient.

 I also see lots of people say just wait until its on gamepass but that's beyond the point of having a PC release. Waiting for gamepass means waiting for the games lifecycle to basically be in its last quarter, leaving anyone solely on PC to wait until around the time playoffs start IRL for the game to be accessible to gamepass subscribers or people who play via cloudplay, people that have to wait for this miss out on earlier WOC/Seasons and in NHL 26's case, will have a very steep learning curve with the gameplay changes with only months before the next title releases. An easy alternative to that would be making it cloudplay on release (not via gamepass), meaning people purchase the game then they can play on PC via cloudplay on release, this would be a good middle ground/compromise to a PC release despite Xbox's somewhat unreliable cloudplay service.