NHL 19 Might Come To PC If Demand Is High Enough
The PC has been slim on licensed sports games before this year. EA has brought the FIFA franchise to Windows platforms for a while now and 2K has been bringing its NBA franchise, but other than that we haven’t seen MLB, NFL, or NHL titles on the platform for quite some time. EA has tried to rectify that this year by bringing Madden NFL 19 to Origin, marking the first time we’ve seen an NFL title on PC for 11 years. While this is nice, a lot of people are wondering if the last holdout of EA’s major sports franchises would be coming to PC as well, the NHL series and NHL 19 in particular.
Shacknews spoke with Creative Director William Ho on whether or not NHL 19 would eventually make its way to PC platforms.
We’ll see. We’re big PC gamers ourselves so we’ll see. If there is enough demand then certainly we’ll want to cater to that.”
Like Madden, EA’s NHL franchise hasn’t shown up in 11 years on PC. EA revealed its Ignite engine back at E3 2013 and said that it was developed on PCs first, so it was odd that for a while they would try to distance themselves from porting their sports games onto the platform. The main reason given was always a lack of demand, but personally, I think it was because they did not port their current generation graphics and gameplay engine into the PC versions of games like Madden 08 and NHL 08.
Both of these games had the same engine and gameplay of the PlayStation 2 versions at a time when the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 were well into their lifecycles. With the low effort and attention directed towards a player base that wants AAA developers to respect their investments and deliver the same game that current gen consoles were getting, it’s easy to see why these versions of their sports titles floundered.
Thankfully, EA seems to have realized this and will deliver at least the same experience that console versions of their sports games present. Madden NFL 19 is available now on EA and Origin Access and will be releasing to the general public on August 10, 2018, for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Windows. NHL 19 will be releasing for Xbox One and PlayStation 4 on September 10th.
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Colin Regan239 Posts
Colin is a freelance writer for DFTG with previous bylines at other media outlets such as Twinfinite.
