Category: NHL 15

There were a few trades at the NHL draft the other day.  EA Sports has chronicled some of the big ones by releasing a few screenshots of players in their new uniforms.  You can check them out below.  NHL 13 is still scheduled to come out on September 11, 2012.

Let us know what other screenshots you want to see in our NHL 13 Screenshot Request Thread.

After months of voting, the NHL 13 cover vote has finally come to an end.  Claude Girioux of the Philedelphia Flyers beat out Pekka Rinne of the Nashville Predators.  The most astonishing part of the cover vote is the margin of victory in the finals.  Girioux only beat out Rinne by less than 1% of the total fan vote.

Over 26 million votes were cast in the nearly 3 month voting period with 2 million votes alone in the finals.  Next year maybe EA Sports will realize how short an attention span sports gamers and the media have and make it a 1 month contest instead of 3 months.

NHL 13 comes out on September 11, 2012.

One of the lead producers on NHL 13, Sean Ramjagsingh (Rammer as he is known to those that follow the NHL franchise closely) has confirmed via Twitter that the NHL 13 demo will feature this year’s two Stanley Cup finalists te Los Angeles Kings and the New Jersey Devils.

Although we don’t know the exact date that the demo will come out, our research looking into the last 3 demo release dates estimates that it should come out around August 20th.

What is the first thing you will do when you get your hands on the demo?  Let us know in the comments section below or in our NHL 13 Forum.

EA Sports released another video today going over a feature that looks to be a big improvement to NHL 13.  They are calling this Hockey IQ but it is just more realistic player movement and awareness.  Right now they are so confident in Hockey IQ that they are calling it, “the best AI ever seen in a hockey game.”  Whether or not that is true remains to be seen.

Last week we took a first look at Hockey IQ at E3.  In this week’s video, we get a few more details and some more gameplay footage.  Check it out below.

Now that the Stanley Cup has come to an end, the one question that we keep getting asked via Twitter and Facebook is, “When is the NHL 13 demo coming out?”  In order to answer that we decided to do some research and look into the previous 3 NHL demo release dates.

NHL 12 demo release date – August 23, 2011
NHL 11 demo release date – August 17th, 2010
NHL 10 demo release date – August 20th, 2009

So with those dates in mind, we are looking at a demo release date for NHL 13 of around August 20th.  Of course this is not set in stone and it could change but history generally serves as an accurate guide.  As always, when we get the official word we will be the first to pass it along to you.

One of the big announcements from EA Sports this week that was largely overlooked is the addition of a new feature in NHL 13 called Hockey IQ.  If this new feature works as advertised, it will be something that everyone can get behind, since everyone wants a more realistic game.

Essentially Hockey IQ is just making every player on the a little bit more aware.  The developers spent more time on NHL 13’s AI then the past 3 years combined.  A similar feature was announced last month for FIFA 13 so it looks like this new technology is being shared amongst many EA Sports games.

The most noticeable changes come in the increased awareness of goalies.  In previous NHL games, the goalies would only be aware of the player with the puck and would be oblivious to everyone else.  This year everything has changed.

Check out the video below and let us know what you think in the comments section.