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Old 09-27-2014, 03:53 PM   #1
CupCrazyManiac
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Exclamation Sources: NHL 15 team lost developers!

Sources: NHL 15 team lost developers

by Mike Straw on September 25, 2014
NHL15

When EA Sports announced that its NHL franchise was going to wait an extra year to make it’s debut on the next-gen consoles from Microsoft and Sony, many fans were both disappointed and exited.

Disappointed because of having to wait a full year, but excited for what the development team was going to bring to the franchise as it transitioned to the newer systems. Unfortunately, fans were left severely angered and disappointed when the announcement came from EA Sports regarding game modes and features that weren’t going to be included in the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 versions of the game.

Gone were modes like EA Sports Hockey League, GM Connected, Live the Life and Online Team play, among others. Features like drafting for your team in Be-A-GM wasn’t available at launch and the ability to play as your AHL affiliate in the mode is gone. And that’s just part of it, but you can read more about the game’s missing features and modes here.

But why, after admitting that the team had been working on NHL 15 for two years, was the game so stripped of features and modes that had become commonplace for the franchise on the last-gen systems? Well, there is actually a very reasonable explanation for it all.

According to multiple sources close to the situation, it was lack of developers on the project that lead to the game ultimately being an extremely bare-bones project.

When EA Sports announced that its NHL franchise was going to wait an extra year to make it’s debut on the next-gen consoles from Microsoft and Sony, many fans were both disappointed and exited.

Disappointed because of having to wait a full year, but excited for what the development team was going to bring to the franchise as it transitioned to the newer systems. Unfortunately, fans were left severely angered and disappointed when the announcement came from EA Sports regarding game modes and features that weren’t going to be included in the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 versions of the game.

Gone were modes like EA Sports Hockey League, GM Connected, Live the Life and Online Team play, among others. Features like drafting for your team in Be-A-GM wasn’t available at launch and the ability to play as your AHL affiliate in the mode is gone. And that’s just part of it, but you can read more about the game’s missing features and modes here.

But why, after admitting that the team had been working on NHL 15 for two years, was the game so stripped of features and modes that had become commonplace for the franchise on the last-gen systems? Well, there is actually a very reasonable explanation for it all.

According to multiple sources close to the situation, it was lack of developers on the project that lead to the game ultimately being an extremely bare-bones project.

NHL 15 was developed by EA Canada, which is also the same EA studio that worked on FIFA as well as the newly launched EA Sports UFC franchise. The sources state that because EA Sports UFC being pushed back and delayed at one point, the decision was made by the higher ups in the company to add more hands to the team in order to get the game out.

The call was then made to pull a number of developers off of NHL 15 — in the middle of its development process — and put them on UFC to ensure that game get released in March 2014.

Then, after the release of UFC, some of those same developers stripped from NHL 15 weren’t even put back on the game. Instead, they were moved to FIFA 15 to finish up that team. Needless to say, that didn’t sit well with those working on the only hockey simulation franchise on the gaming market.

The lack of hands to work on NHL 15 ultimately lead to the decision by those in charge of the game to eliminate some planned popular features to ensure the game would hit consumers at the expected time. Should the decision to delay have been made, the sources noted that it’s unlikely that features like EASHL and GM Connected would’ve been implemented. The delay would’ve simply been to add the features that are coming via the post-launch content updates that EA Sports announced shortly after the game’s release.


Source: http://strengthgamer.com/news/source...st-developers/

Last edited by CupCrazyManiac; 10-24-2014 at 02:08 PM.
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