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Electronic Arts (EA) Brings Female Players to Ultimate Team
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Electronic Arts (EA - Free Report) popular hockey franchise, NHL 23, will be the first sports game to feature female players in its Ultimate Team mode when it releases on Oct 14. This development is significant for a genre that has recently begun to feature women’s athletics in a meaningful way.
After racking up a record 18 points at the Winter Olympics this past February, Nurse is making history yet again — on the cover of NHL 23, as the first woman to be featured on a cover for the EA Sports NHL video game franchise, alongside Anaheim Ducks forward Trevor Zegras.
The last game in the series, NHL 22, was the first to add women’s national teams to the selection of teams that players could choose.
Hockey Ultimate Team [HUT] is NHL 23’s version of the card-collecting mode that has drawn criticism in Madden and FIFA for its focus on microtransactions. Female players will appear in packs and the auction house, while their ratings will be comparable to their male peers.
EA Sports’ NHL series is set to enter its second year featuring the Frostbite engine, and with it comes a slew of impressive visual enhancements, both to the game itself and the arenas and fans in attendance.
NHL 23 will add over 500 new Last Chance Puck Movement gameplay animations and enhanced Goalie AI, wherein Goalie’s will have more than 50 new animations throughout the play. There will be more than 50 new Human Desperation Save Groups taking advantage of the Last Chance Puck Movements,
Depending on how the action is unfolding on the ice, fans will become louder or quieter with how their team is performing. Players might even see hundreds of hats fly onto the ice if they hit a goal in the dying seconds.
The company is also introducing new levels of immersion like Overtime winner, Hat Trick, and Shootout celebrations to build hype and highlight the power of this year’s visuals.
Besides, an all-new Franchise mode will bring all-new levels of versatility to the game, including adjustments to the number of teams, games played, divisions, conferences, playoff rounds, league salary cap, and more.
EA Sports plans to add cross-platform matchmaking in November, specifically for HUT and World of Chel. PlayStation and Xbox players will only be able to play against each other across their respective console generations.
Stiff Competition in the Gaming Industry Creates Challenge
The company’s shares have returned 5.2% in the year-to-date period compared with the Zacks Toys - Games - Hobbies industry's rise of 3.4%. The Consumer Discretionary sector has tumbled 27% year to date.
The Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company stated that it would launch a remake of its classic sci-fi survival horror game, Dead Space, on Jan 27, 2023. In partnership with Middle-earth Enterprises, a division of The Saul Zaentz Company, EA will be adding to its ever-expanding mobile game portfolio a collectible role-playing game (RPG), The Lord of the Rings: Heroes of Middle-earth. This advancement is expected to boost the company’s gaming business in the near term. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
However, great prospects in the gaming industry also bring in intensifying competition for EA, from the likes of Take-Two Interactive (TTWO - Free Report) and Activision Blizzard .
Activision Blizzard plans to launch World of Warcraft: Dragonflight, the upcoming WoW expansion, in the second half of 2022, which will likely boost its top line.
Take-Two’s Rollerdrome, a third-person action shooter, was launched on Aug 16. On Sep 9, 2K and Visual Concepts will launch NBA 2K23, the next offering from its industry-leading NBA series.
Further, 2K and Disney’s (DIS - Free Report) Marvel Entertainment have announced the release of Marvel’s Midnight Sun.
Marvel’s Midnight Sun is on the darker side of Disney’s Marvel Universe. The title will launch later this fiscal year on Windows PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5.
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Electronic Arts (EA) Brings Female Players to Ultimate Team
Electronic Arts (EA - Free Report) popular hockey franchise, NHL 23, will be the first sports game to feature female players in its Ultimate Team mode when it releases on Oct 14. This development is significant for a genre that has recently begun to feature women’s athletics in a meaningful way.
After racking up a record 18 points at the Winter Olympics this past February, Nurse is making history yet again — on the cover of NHL 23, as the first woman to be featured on a cover for the EA Sports NHL video game franchise, alongside Anaheim Ducks forward Trevor Zegras.
The last game in the series, NHL 22, was the first to add women’s national teams to the selection of teams that players could choose.
Hockey Ultimate Team [HUT] is NHL 23’s version of the card-collecting mode that has drawn criticism in Madden and FIFA for its focus on microtransactions. Female players will appear in packs and the auction house, while their ratings will be comparable to their male peers.
Electronic Arts Inc. Price and Consensus
Electronic Arts Inc. price-consensus-chart | Electronic Arts Inc. Quote
Feature Additions and Enhancements To Draw Users
EA Sports’ NHL series is set to enter its second year featuring the Frostbite engine, and with it comes a slew of impressive visual enhancements, both to the game itself and the arenas and fans in attendance.
NHL 23 will add over 500 new Last Chance Puck Movement gameplay animations and enhanced Goalie AI, wherein Goalie’s will have more than 50 new animations throughout the play. There will be more than 50 new Human Desperation Save Groups taking advantage of the Last Chance Puck Movements,
Depending on how the action is unfolding on the ice, fans will become louder or quieter with how their team is performing. Players might even see hundreds of hats fly onto the ice if they hit a goal in the dying seconds.
The company is also introducing new levels of immersion like Overtime winner, Hat Trick, and Shootout celebrations to build hype and highlight the power of this year’s visuals.
Besides, an all-new Franchise mode will bring all-new levels of versatility to the game, including adjustments to the number of teams, games played, divisions, conferences, playoff rounds, league salary cap, and more.
EA Sports plans to add cross-platform matchmaking in November, specifically for HUT and World of Chel. PlayStation and Xbox players will only be able to play against each other across their respective console generations.
Stiff Competition in the Gaming Industry Creates Challenge
The company’s shares have returned 5.2% in the year-to-date period compared with the Zacks Toys - Games - Hobbies industry's rise of 3.4%. The Consumer Discretionary sector has tumbled 27% year to date.
The Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company stated that it would launch a remake of its classic sci-fi survival horror game, Dead Space, on Jan 27, 2023. In partnership with Middle-earth Enterprises, a division of The Saul Zaentz Company, EA will be adding to its ever-expanding mobile game portfolio a collectible role-playing game (RPG), The Lord of the Rings: Heroes of Middle-earth. This advancement is expected to boost the company’s gaming business in the near term. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
However, great prospects in the gaming industry also bring in intensifying competition for EA, from the likes of Take-Two Interactive (TTWO - Free Report) and Activision Blizzard .
Activision Blizzard plans to launch World of Warcraft: Dragonflight, the upcoming WoW expansion, in the second half of 2022, which will likely boost its top line.
Take-Two’s Rollerdrome, a third-person action shooter, was launched on Aug 16. On Sep 9, 2K and Visual Concepts will launch NBA 2K23, the next offering from its industry-leading NBA series.
Further, 2K and Disney’s (DIS - Free Report) Marvel Entertainment have announced the release of Marvel’s Midnight Sun.
Marvel’s Midnight Sun is on the darker side of Disney’s Marvel Universe. The title will launch later this fiscal year on Windows PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5.