NHL 15 Poll Results Show Loss of Popular Modes Will Cost EA Lots of Sales

NHL 15 looked as though it was going to contend for “Sports Game of the Year” status and it even pulled in some awards from its showing at E3. Extra development time was said by EA to be of benefit due to the ability to focus more on features. Unfortunately that turned out to be false as EA Sports Hockey League, GM Connected, and some other features won’t make it over to the Xbox One and PS4 version this year.

Over 7200 people chimed in by responding to the poll on how this will affect their purchase plans and the results suggest that NHL 15 is going to struggle to regain traction due to the decisions made during development. 

38% of voters indicated they had expected to buy NHL 15 at release but now will not be doing so. 27% of those have no interest now in buying it at all while the remaining 11% may pick it up when it is cheaper or maybe when Online Team Play gets patched in.

While there are 25% of people who don’t feel the value of the product has dropped for them with the loss of the modes, 13% more do feel harmed by the drop in the product’s value but not enough to stop them from buying.

Only 3% of respondents noted that they were going to buy the 360/PS3 version which includes all the modes. Obviously the audience at sites like this one are more hardcore-centric and informed about the product as well as being more likely to have moved on to the new consoles. However sales will be higher on XB1/PS4 than the last generation beginning with all of this year’s releases. That’s where the engaged consumer base now resides. The 360/PS3 version has become largely irrelevant almost overnight.

The results show a consistency when considering Operation Sports’ polls on the subject which found first 40% and then 35% of interested consumers were changing their mind on buying NHL 15. Realistically the number won’t be that high in the end but even losing 15-20% of sales will be a severe hit for EA to take on a relatively low selling franchise.