17th year without a PC release

Ah yeah this why they put NFL which is only interesting for people in one country and football games on PC. 2K also making a fortune each year from NBA on PC.

The reason in reality is just that EA is ignoring the market and refusing free money because executives are still stuck in mid 2000's when PC gaming was in shambles. There's no other explanation why.

It doesn't sell great on consoles either. So it's a win win situation for everybody if it would be on PC. More money for EA and people can play NHL finally.

Porting the game would cost pennies. And the market is bigger than NFL. No one outside USA cares about NFL and americans prefer consoles over PC's. While ice hockey is popular worldwide. Same with basketball. NBA 2k is selling like crazy on PC. By cancelling NBA live on PC EA basically said no to 300-500million bucks. Now NHL of course is much less popular sport in general but even if it can only generate 50mil/year it would be a huge win.

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.

Unfortunately there is 0 competition for EANHL. They know it and take advantage of it.

Thankfully, making a game today is a lot easier than it was 10, even 5 years ago. Give it 2-3 years, there’s gonna be some really good small indie games for 1/8 the price of EANHL that takes the hockey gaming community by storm. Then, we’ll see if EANHL makes a quality product, or if they just roll over and die. 

"Porting the game would cost pennies"

Are you a developer and can explain how porting over everything and then also having the maintenance behind specifically PC related issues would cost pennies?

"The market is bigger than NFL"

"No one outside USA cares about NFL"

"NHL wouldn't sell less since there's interest in it in multiple countries and regions.

AND YET the viewership numbers say that they aren't even close to being in the same league as NHL...

Avg viewers NHL : 
2020: 391K / 2021: 467K / 2022: 465K / 2023: 504K

Avg Viewers NFL:
2020: 15.4M / 2021: 17.1M / 2022:  16.7M / 2023 17.9M

"but even if it can only generate 50mil/year it would be a huge win."

NHL will NOT generate 50mil/year extra by being on PC....
Using the Boxleiter method to calculate sales

4000 reviews on Madden 25, means roughly speaking 160,000 sales okay:

160,000 x $70 = $11.2M in sales and this is before thinking about anything like the cost to Steams/refunds and chargebacks that people do on games on PC/taxes in general etc. So NOWHERE NEAR THE 50M you think they would be getting.

If you can't do math then just don't.

Porting is cheap. That's a fact. Console exclusives being ported to PC even when they sell 20k copies. And there's a reason why everyone is doing that.

Ice hockey is more popular than NFL. Check your facts before spreading misinformation. Football is number one hands down, followed by basketball, tennis, cricket and ice hockey. American football is one of the least popular sports.

You forget that every game is filled with mtx. Do you think NBA makes a billion just from sales? And this proves your logic is flawed. NBA is profitable on all platforms yet there's no NBA live anymore but for some reason there's the least popular sports game on earth - NFL.

You also keep contradicting yourself so maybe stop? You calculate sales numbers for NFL and clearly see it's on PC which means it's worth it to port even if i sells badly. If porting as you imply would be too expensive than no one would bother with poriting games which doesn't sell at least 500k copies. It doesn't matter how much they would get on top - 50m or 1m, it's still a profit with nothing to lose.

And NHL is ice hockey, it's a worldwide sports while NFL is exclusive to one country. NHL would be more popular outside USA while NFL sells great on consoles because americans prefer consoles.

NHL NEVER was a huge money maker and that's why it needs to be ported to PC - to increase the profits. Otherwise it's counting its last years as a franchise.

Even PGA is on PC. 2K will just snatch NHL too and it will be on PC eventually just like it happened with NBA because EA refused to release it on PC. PC is the main market these days.

Did I not just do the math right in front of you? Did you want me to go further? SURE

Take that 11.2 million and take 30% of that to give to Steam/Valve for use of their product. Leaves you with 7.8M

Take approx 10% for refunds and chargebacks and it leaves you with just over 7 million. 

Another 10% lets say for taxes and what not. Now it's 6.3 million.

So now you only have just over 6 million in revenue that you need to pay out to new developers/testers/support team/servers/new license with NHL specific to PC etc. Those guys also need to now work with the current team to get things up and running smoothly. Do you really think after all of this They really are making anything out of it? You say does it matter if they only make 1m because its a profit with nothing to lose? Yes that matters. Profit margins are very important for a business and there is something to lose in the quality of the product that is designed for the current platforms. 

Look I'd love for it to be on PC as I know I have buddies that no longer play the game because they are PC people and don't want to spend for a console to play one franchise game that's only on console and I get that. The reality is it is not worth it or in there best interest. As I have said in the past, I am sure there are people who are being paid much larger amounts of money to do this extensive research and much more complex math to see if there is value to it being ported to PC than the basic free research and Math I am doing. That's the big key though is there has to not just be profits but enough profits or value to make that next leap forward, otherwise is it even worth it?

Looking at the PS6 leaks and I gotta say it’s a high end PC at the moment. I would imagine a  PC version isn’t to far away as in all honesty I think it sounds like PS6 will be more powerful than most people’s PCs. Would just be an operating system issue at that point

Tbh nothing compares to a pc, just out of sheer performance, a moderate PC build in modern day will outperform the latest generation of consoles, next gen may eventually become equivalent but within a years time of its release, intel, nvidia and amd would make it obsolete.

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.