Why is there no hockey game for Xbox 360 or PS3 ?

Why not.

Hockey is the third biggest ball sport in the world.

People have made a Gaelic football game but no hockey game.

Its crazy.

I'm leading a small team trying to correct the situation but the going is tough in the current economic climate...

Field Hockey PC Game

cool

Goodluck

I'd love one of the quality of EA's Madden or NHL games, but the market simply isn't there to justify that sort of development budget. Rugby, AFL, Cricket all generate many more sponsorship $ and TV coverage than hockey, but there's yet to be a good version of any of them released. You want quality team sports sims on console, you're limited to the 4 major US sports, plus soccer. And even then, some of the better games (i.e. EA's NCAA football franchise that I much prefer to Madden, or any baseball game) don't get released here in oz.

If you've got a PS3 all games are multi region so just have to get it imported, i love it. Much prefer NCAA to madden as well.

Planning to do just that this year, having bought a PS3 late last year. I remember getting very excited in about 2005, when my local store was playing the EA preview video, and NCAA was part of it, thought it meant it was finally being released. No such luck. I actually found NCAA 08 in the second hand section last month, so I've been busy playing that.

Cos there are too many rules in hockey!
stick tackles and lifted balls, aerial passes taking off, aerial passes landing, and god knows how you'd run a short corner!

Its just too difficult.

What about an indoor hockey game? Would be a lot easier rules wise and programming I would imagine.

not really! How would you blow for a lifted hit? who decides its a lifted hit. How would you run a PC? one of the elements of indoor is the fatigue level, what role would you play, coach or on-field.

there is simply too much.

As much as id absolutely love a good hockey game on the ps3 i do agree with MK. I think the running of shorties where so many different things can happen with so many different people it would make it hard to control.

one of the biggest reasons is- its not a mainstream sport although its the third most played game in the world

The lifted hit could be a consequence of trying to pass the ball with too much power and to do of the skill level of the playerthe ball is being passed to etc like any other sports game would generate the control on passing, shooting etc. The fatigue levels etc could be done in the same way that an ice hockey or basketball game fatigue levels are done. PCs could be run like a madden style game selecting a play and then using the ordinary controls that your would for the play to carry it out.

Surely this could mean due to development in those parts of the world. That hockey could be growing. Look at cricket with the IPL for example. The video game industry could possibly expand in that direction if development in areas of the world came up to a level in which it was sensible to think of it as a target audience.

So in the near future it could be a possibility.

If EA wanted to do this, I genuinely think they could. And very easily too.

The penalty corner thing would be pretty simple, set plays could just be ran the same as rugby set plays are on the rugby game they do.

What Nick said.

Margins for profit in games are relatively small, if you have a relatively small buying market then you are probably sunk.

At the risk of resurrecting a month-old post, I agree with most of the posts below.

I think the comparison with Gaelic Games is a bit unfair, though, given that it's not quite the 'niche' sport that it's perceived to be in the rest of the world: The All-Ireland final always sells out Croke Park (the fourth largest stadium in Europe), and there's a large following in Asia and America, too. They also ported the game to the Antipodes by just changing the kits and calling it "Aussie Rules Football".

Desipte all this though - and perhaps I'm biased - but this was, without a doubt, one of the worst games ever released for the PS2. Honestly, it's practically unplayable, it's so bug-ridden and jerky. And this is all because, despite having a solid fan base, there just isn't the sort of profit to be made in a game which doesn't have the same fan base as football, or any of the American sports, which means it only got a tiny development budget. And sadly, because of such a small budget, the final product is always going to be shoddy.

That problem is only exacerbated by the spiralling development costs of modern video games - it's not just niche games like hockey and GAA that don't get released any more, but also original games that would probably get labelled 'cult' nowadays (PS2 games like Killer 7, Viewtiful Joe, Ico). If you look at all the original games being released nowadays, they're almost exclusively being released be independent developers on a peppercorn budget (which'd probably mean no EHL license); in my opinion something like Xbox Live might be the only potential outlet for a hockey game, unfortunately.

Mathew just said it...........totally agree with him

And you would have to release a new version every two years to incorporate the rule changes - not sure if a patch could fix that :nerd:

If a top notch game was released would this improve player understanding of the rules?????

There's a good point.
Plus they keep thinking of different ways to keep people safe or trying to accomodate for everyone, so the rules keep changing all the time these days.