Will NHL 21 Come Out For PC?

[EBMR]

With Xbox Series X and Ps5 having PC parts in them, there's no excuse to take a little bit more time to make a PC version. I own a Ps4 so telling people about Xbox is not helpful to everybody at large. With the COVID-19 pandemic, I'm sure fans of NHL will be willing to wait a little longer for there to be a PC version. I would prefer to not buy yet another $500 machine just to play one game when I have a PC that can run any modern game really well.

And if you think for one second that  a modern NHL game would not be popular on PC, I would suggest you look at the NHL 04 rebuilt community forum.

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/nhl04rebuilt/

23,234  Members

[TTZ_Dipsy]

@EBMR 

Rumor is we already need to wait a little bit longer because of Corona but I wouldn't exactly equate having a few PC parts making a PC port infinitely easier.

Let's say NHL sells 100,000 copies - Best case scenario (every member of that PC mod community is still active) that's only 20% of the community that'd instantly buy the port; those numbers aren't exactly great.

As a console player I've already had to suffer through NHL 15 and lacklustre updates throughout - last thing I'd want is the already taxed team taking time and resources away from the console version to work on PC. My opinion isn't worth more than yours, and I actually do wish you guys can have your own port, but even a casual look at thr numbers shows it's just not worth the effort.

By bringing monetization back to EASHL, tweaking HUT, and changing how they ship/sell the franchise, the earliest you can expect a PC version is next year. The PC community is so scattered; you all need to make a singular group to change EA's opinion - I'm thinking you'd need at least 40k signatures in a petition for them to even give you the light of day

[boomingshot]

EA BRING IT BACK ON PC PLEASE.

Madden is there, Fifa is there, just need NHL to have a complete blast.

[Benito218]

Your statement is littered with errors.

NHL on PC needs to happen soon. I refuse to pay for a console just to play NHL. NHL was my favorite game until I switch to PC. As a "community manager" you have no idea what the community actually wants. How about doing a poll? Asking the community if they would want to see NHL on PC and see what happens. There are countless threads and people asking for it. The PC crowd is only growing. It is 2020 not 2007. Get with the times EA or someone else will.

[younever_know8]

@TTZ_DipsyI've wanted EA sports to move away from yearly iterations into a games as a service format for years now. Bring the title to PC, rebrand it to simply NHL and do seasons like every other games as a service multiplayer game.

This gives devs room to breathe for feature release and makes everyone happier. This is why modern game dev does multiplayer this way these days. I'm not sure why EA sports doesn't but I suspect it is due to some arbitrary contract with the license holders.

For EA sports the concept of "seasons" actually makes the most sense. Because professional sports have ya know...seasons. EA should dramatically reduce the barrier to entry on these games by dropping the price point or making it F2P and use MTX (as they already do).

EA posted an annual revenue of 1.26 billion (https://www.google.com/amp/s/finance.yahoo.com/amphtml/news/electronic-arts-ea-beats-q4-212509910.ht...). There is no reason they cannot go this route AND bring the series to pc. Keep in mind the ea platform lives on PC with Origin. Every year they fail to include all their major properties on their own platform they further hurt their brand.

[EA_Aljo]

@Benito218 

Thanks for the feedback. I assure you, this has been researched many, many times by the NHL studio. I understand it seems as simple as having a few thousand people making it feel like everyone in the world wants NHL on PC. The reality is, this game has a very small population of PC players. When games like FIFA and Madden have a far smaller population of players on PC, it means NHL would have even less. Unfortunately, there just isn't a high enough demand for NHL on PC. Thankfully though, it looks like cloud gaming services could make the game playable through PC sometime down the road.

[younever_know8]

@TTZ_Dipsy I've wanted NHL to move to a games as a service model for years now. Bring the title to PC, rebrand it as NHL, reduce the price drastically or make F2P and do "seasonal" updates. Think about it, of all the games as a service games sports games actually make the most sense to have seasons because professional sports have...seasons!

There is a reason modern multiplayer games do this. It gives breathing room to the devs for feature release, it creates a better sales model based on MTX and ultimately makes for a better game. The only reason I believe EA sports doesnt do this is due to some contract with the license holders.

EA turns a big profit, they hit a quarterly revenue of 1.21 billion this year (https://www.google.com/amp/s/ca.finance.yahoo.com/amphtml/news/ea-sees-full-revenue-above-200805858....). There is no reason they can't afford to bring the title to PC.

If we look at NHL as a product and consider it's dwindling playerbase, why not use it as the jumping point to bring EA Sports into the modern era of multiplayer gaming?

[Benito218]

@EA_Aljo http://chng.it/FB8J4sBXyj so these 8k people who signed this mean nothing to EA? This wasn’t even put out there for pc gamers to see this was all PC friends sending it to other friends to sign.

[EA_Aljo]

@Benito218 

We definitely appreciate having 8000 people say they are interested in a PC version, but it would probably have to be a much higher number to make it worth it to delay progressing the game on consoles and port the game to PC.

[younever_know8]

@EA_Aljo There are countless petitions with 1000s of signatures, news stories, forum threads and youtube videos asking for NHL on PC.

I don't mean to sound brash but I've been on Origin for over 5 years now and I have not once been given an opportunity to fill a survey asking for the type of content I'd like to see on PC, let alone any survey pertaining to sports games on PC.

It's a bit of a bad circular logic when the moment anyone asks they are given a stern "no" and to be honest after 10 YEARS without a port most folks will just give up on asking, thats human. This doesnt speak to newer people using Origin, would they play NHL? How about Windows users who simply don't have Origin installed, would they play? EA is bringing games to Steam, how many of the millions of users on there would be interested?

Guess we'll never know.