EA Drops the Ball

After almost a year and half year since the Wii launched, Electronic Arts has yet to produce a hockey game for the Wii, even though they have made numerous games for other sports.  What makes matters worse is that EA’s rival, 2K Sports, just announced recently that they will have an NHL game for the Wii ready by this October. I don’t understand why Electronic Arts would not want to make this game. I think the Wii remote has the most potential in a hockey game than any other sport. You could be able to dangle around defenseman and score goals just like the pros do.  With 1:1 control it could be the most realistic sports game on the market.

Since EA will not have an NHL title ready for gamers, they could possibly lose customers and the money that comes with them.Last year the Playstation 3 NHL 08 sold just over 110,00 copies while NHL 2K8 sold a little under 39,000 copies and for XBox 360 NHL 08 was purchased 222,000 times yet NHL 2K8 only sold 100,000 times (information from vgchartz ).  Assuming this trend would follow up on the Wii, that is a lot of business lost for Electronic Arts.  If NHL 2k9 ends up turing out to be a great game, EA may never get those customers back.

What doesn’t make sense is that EA’s main developing office for most of their Wii games is in Vancouver. A city in Canada. The Canada that invented the sport.  EA has pretty much every other major sport on the Wii, except for hockey. What amazes me too is that EA will be constructing a new Boogie game. Even though it had decent sales, it received very bad ratings from critics, evengetting a 4.5/10 from IGN.  It seems like the company isn’t interested in a new challenge that could yield a great reward.

It is unclear if an NHL game from EA will be coming next year. When asked about debuting new sports franchises to the Wii, David Tinson (EA Public Relations) had this to say:

“The one thing you’ve heard Peter Moore talk about is our interest in the fitness space. That’s one thing we can’t make specific announcements about now, but we can definitely confirm that we’re interested in the fitness space and feel we have a place to be in the fitness space. So absolutely, there are a couple of things that will debut and be specific to the Wii in the very near future.”

A checked EA’s website and there is nothing that indicates a hockey game coming to the Wii this October.  So EA’s hockey fans will have to wait another year, that is if they aren’t playing 2K Sports version of an NHL game.

Thoughts?



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  • Chad

    nhl 2k series was good on the dreamcast, since then, it has been horrible.

  • loofa

    ^
    I am hoping things change.

  • http://www.righteousgraphics.com Mack2D2

    I agree, that EA has dropped the ball on this one, but I’m thankful… because, with very few exceptions (BoomBlox for one), I think EA’s games are all put out to market before being complete. I’ve said it a thousand times and I’ll keep grabbin the soap box everytime I get a chance, we NEED to stop supporting games that are obviously half-hearted… I’m looking at you EA.

    On the other hand, NHL2K1 was an incredibly shallow game on the dreamcast, with a somewhat baffling franchise mode… that wasn’t necessarily a franchise mode so much as a career mode, if that makes sense. I have really enjoyed most of the 2K sports titles like tennis, football, and the early installments of baseball on the dreamcast… but I’ve always felt a little let down by they NHL games. Here’s hoping they make good on this one so that in 2010, when EA (hopefully) loses it’s grasp on the NFL players license, they’ll have a stronger fanbase over at 2K to get some solid NFL game competition going between the devs. Man, I’m a ranter lately, shut up Kevin, just hit submit already!

  • http://www.natedillon.com Nate

    I desperately want to play hockey on my Wii, but I would rather not play a game that was just thrown together. NHL 2008 was horrible on PC, and I’m guessing any Wii version of NHL 2009 would be the same. EA just doesn’t seem to care, and it really shows in the NHL games. I guess I’ll be picking up NHL 2k9 in October.