Frostbite?
Had a very interesting read in this article. Maybe it's old news for everyone else, but I hope Frostbite stays away from this game as long as possible. Actually, hope it never makes it in NHL, period.
https://kotaku.com/how-biowares-anthem-went-wrong-1833731964?utm_medium=sharefromsite&utm_source=kotaku_copy&utm_campaign=top
https://kotaku.com/how-biowares-anthem-went-wrong-1833731964?utm_medium=sharefromsite&utm_source=kotaku_copy&utm_campaign=top
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After the difficulties developers are having, notably with Anthem, and the new star wars game being on unreal 4, I'm sure there's a good chance that frostbite gets phased out.
Sure they do. All the time.
To be fair, your example is 30 years old, and from a company that has a history of being very focused on good customer experience.
I work for a company now that built an in-house software solution for a problem that doesn't exist, and even though its budget has spun out of control and it doesn't do a lot of the stuff it's supposed to, we aren't going back anytime soon. Lots of companies, specifically ones only concerned with bottom lines will fall for the sunk cost fallacy as its easier to pretend that everything is great than admit you wasted money to your shareholders.
Sounds like some pretty poor decision making.
Alot of times they do, however, EA did not develop Frostbite.
AFAIK Frostbite is more DICE's baby than EA's to be honest, not too sure where you've seen that. It was developed in 2013 for Battlefield Bad Company and the first sports game it was introduced to was FIFA 17.
As @Z0mbieBabyJesus pointed out Fallen Order seems like it won't be on Frostbite and Apex Legends is on Source. I'm pretty sure the studio has a big say in this and if they choose to move over to Frostbite they would have a good reason to do so.
All I'm saying is that it wasn't developed by EA Sports, it was developed by DICE. EA may have acquired DICE but EA Sports did not develop Frostbite. FIFA incorporated it in FIFA 17 years after the game engine was created.
You are free to your own assumptions, I'm just sharing the information I have at hand.
I don't believe the engine would do anything for the NHL series other than allowing the sharing of assets (once the engine is fully integrated) and a continuity with other EA Sports titles in regards to technical elements such as lighting, shading, audio etc.
For those thinking Frostbite is the be-all-end-all of game engines and that it will somehow revolutionize EA's NHL title to become the hockey game 'we've always wanted' will be sorely disappointed if/when it is announced NHL is moving to Frostbite.
If anything, we'll have another year like 15 - features stripped, existing features bugging out, a continued complacency in regards to evolving the user experience in group-play modes, and possibly another generation of NHL titles without a simple roster share and/or online franchise/season mode.
Or, we get this big announcement that NHL is on Frostbite, we get a 'sizzle' trailer and come to realize the only elements getting an improvement off the bat are visual elements.
Sure, it's cool and all that the crowd looks more alive, sounds bigger, reacts better, etc - but do we still get sucked in to the boards by board-play? Probably. Will people still be able to puck-rag when they're up a goal or two? Likely. Will the multiplayer aspect still exist, and if so, will an online session with 12 random people still be allowed to be interrupted by one user pressing pause? At what point will we get a pause overlay where the action isn't stopped? Where we can perform in-game tasks such as line edits/goalie changes/ timeouts WITHOUT stopping the action for 30 seconds?
Unless the glaring community/multiplayer issues with this franchise get ironed out - Frostbite won't be anything more than a buzz word used to give the impression NHL went through some kind of 'transition' or 'revolution'.
No, what makes it theirs is the fact they purchased it.
Did you even read any part of the article?? That is the topic, not who made it or who has the right to use it.
The point of the article is to show how difficult it is to work with the engine. How the engine was never designed for sports. How transitioning to the new engine would set this game back quite a few steps and probably set it back a couple of years.
Or, it's only a matter of time before they take fifa away from frostbite. It can go either way, but between star wars battlefront 2, and Anthem, and possibly others, development hasn't exactly been smooth for developers using the engine.
There's a reason the new star wars is not being made by dice and is not using frostbite. And it's not because of micro transactions. Frostbite Imo, is going the way of the dodo.