Will NHL 21 Come Out For PC?

I do feel like an all or nothing final poll to end all polls would be the right way to go. PC players will need to really show they are serious so the dev team can have proper stats.

The poll will need to be available for at least a week or two and there needs to be a way of ensuring no cheating/bots scew the results (not really sure how unique ID's work in these regards).

@Benito218 

I'll pass on the suggestion.

This thread has 69 responses since January 1st. Many of those are repeat postings. If the PC demand were higher, most likely this thread would be a longer. I'm not saying there is no interest. There's just not as much of it as you may think.

I understand there's a lot that goes into it. More than my knowledge of game design, but you're not some small studio either. You're a AAA studio. And hearing you say you'll pass on the suggestion of polling to see what people want because these obscure forums don't get many views and comments is disheartening once again. Perhaps EA should release the death grip on contracts with leagues so you can have competition and then maybe we'd get an NHL game for us PC players to play. 

Oh congrats on your record sales on Madden and FIFA by the way. I'm sure PC ports had something to do with it. 

@Beastwood22 

Well he's not refusing the idea, just putting the bug in the ear of people who can actually make the greatest impact. AHQ definitely isn't the right spot for a major poll and neither are the main forums if I'm being honest - I see the same exact people every time I log in there and the majority I bet don't give two goots about PC.

NHL isn't exclusive so anyone can make a hockey game. People even said they wouldn't care if they controlled a Blaine Gortzky, hockey is hockey; companies just dont want to take the giant risk when the sport doesn't sell well.

Lol Madden and Fifa are so immensely more popular than NHL its no wonder why they make more money. Soccer fans are insane, you can literally put anything in as mtx and they'll buy it - PC has very little to do with their earnings

@EA_Aljo 

Why can't the team just put it on the xbox game pass PC beta so we can play it on PC and have cross play?  Surely that cannot be that hard to implement these days...Literally the only game I want to play that I can't is  NHL.  It is just not worth getting the console and xbox live for one game.

@Benito218 

I pretty much play on everything except Xbox but that doesn't really matter, at least not here. Normally I'd be the first one to jump on the let's hate on EA bandwagon but there is no way of really skirting around the fact they are right when it comes to PC demand.

The highest petition numbers in a single place have been roughly 20,000 (I've even voted yes we need PC NHL even though I definitely won't buy it for PC, just to help you out) - those are still too low. This time it's not on EA to just make it for the community, it's on the community to convince them it's worth it. I haven't seen the PC crowd really say anything other than "I want it so that means everyone wants it".

Small tests, a beta, help from the mod community - it all *could* work, and they should definitely try something if/when they have the time. As I've said before, if you want to be miserable like the rest of us (because it's not exactly like console NHL is the best it can be), than all the power to ya

@JayDaCuckSlayer 

If it were that easy, it would have been done. The truth is that porting the game to PC and setting up cross-play is a lot more involved. If this would be a good solution to get more people to play, we'd be doing it. I don't know how I can really stress this any better. We'd love to have the game on as many platforms as possible and are always looking for those opportunities when they make sense to do so.

They won't release NHL (or any other title for that matter) on play anywhere because it directly competes with their own platform, Origin.  If you look at the list of play anywhere titles there isnt a single EA game.  

https://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/xbox-play-anywhere

Of course NHL isn't available through Origin anyway but for EA they'd be cannibalizing their own platform by releasing a title essentially "for free" on Xbox through PC.  Even though by doing so that title would be available to more people and cross platform between PC and console.  Of course EA's own platform doesn't have all major EA titles either, so said title probably isn't available on PC anyway. And of course, let's not even get started of the marketing implications with Origin access and Xbox Game Pass.  So of course if that all doesn't make much sense you'd be rightly confused lmao.  😞

How easy is it for developers to incorporate Play Anywhere/cross-play?

Ralph Fulton, creative director, Playground Games: It’s actually very easy. UWP is a great help with this. Because we’re using a single service – Xbox Live – and a single API, the code is almost identical between Xbox and Windows 10 versions. This makes it much cleaner and easier to write the code in the first place, and it’s then easier to maintain.

Source

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@EA_Aljo wrote:

@Beastwood22 

Wouldn't a crude port be even more disappointing? If we're going to do this, it's not going to be crude. It's going to have the necessary infrastructure to support it. We can't just copy and paste the game to PC and it's good to go. There is a lot more than you realize that goes into this. I 1000% assure you that if it were as easy as you think, it would have been done. This isn't us disrespecting PC players. Let's say you have a pizza restaurant with thousands of customers. 10 of them ask you to add a peanut butter, cauliflower and banana pie to the menu. Are you going to spend a lot more money providing that than it's going to make on return? Do those customers now feel disrespected because you're not paying for it out of pocket to make a few people happy? Now, consider the work it would take to get this up and running. You'd have to take people away from supporting the thousands of other customers to make a few happy and taking a loss at the same time.

I get the frustration and disappointment, but you're acting like it's personal and we don't like PC players. Many of us here are PC players so that's not the case. It just doesn't make sense to put all the investment into something that is going to be played by a fraction of the community. When you have hundreds of thousands of players and only a few thousand of them would be on PC, it's hard to see how it would be of benefit to stop production on consoles and focus on PC. Again though, with the advent of cloud gaming on the horizon, it's quite possible that will be a good solution for NHL on PC.

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Yes I 1000% think EA, a billion dollar company should spend a lot more money providing a little fan service for their loyal customers who helped make them the behemoth they are today. Sure they might lose some money but they would gain more loyal fans. Now tell me, what’s more important? Your customers or profit?

@EA_AljoDoesnt make any sense. If you think the forums are representative of a community it explain alot of things about alot of EA games losing touch with their actual PLAYERbase(or games in general this problem is a pandemic).

NHL achieved the same status as HL3. It's a PC meme not a game anymore. Why would people flood the forums to talk about it when the last one you released on PC was NHL 2009? IF and when people google it they end up here and first thing they see is you answering everyone finding new ways to formulate the same old excuse we've been served for over a decade. Probably the worst attempt i've ever seen at generating hype.

When i think about it i actually never met someone who used forums in the first place anyway. No joke i know more people who commited suicide( 2 ) than people who ever used a forum and everyone i know play games. My mom and dad included lol. People enjoy the games if they're good, refund it without thinking if anything in it isnt up to their taste or just go on living their lives. Why would someone come here? People who do either talk to the wind, a wall or have their post simply deleted and this is still true for most studios even when it concern game breaking bugs.

The whole industry trained people to ignore forums...

@817chPl34se 

I don't see how the industry has trained people to ignore forums. We have hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of posts between Answers HQ as well as our official forums. Regardless, it's not just about how many people participate in the forums. I can assure you there has been very extensive research done on this. Should there be a time when putting the very high amount of work involved in a PC version makes it worth releasing, chances are good it'll be done.