NHL 13

NHL 13 is an ice hockey video game developed by EA Canada and published by EA Sports. It is the 22nd installment in the NHL series and was released on September 11, 2012 in North America, Europe and Australia and New Zealand. The game was released for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 and features Philadelphia Flyers forward Claude Giroux on the cover.[1] The game was unveiled at the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2012 (E3 2012), which took place from June 5-7, 2012. The game's demo was released on the Xbox Live Marketplace and PlayStation Store on August 21 and 22, 2012.[4] There was a vote that decided which player would be on the NHL 13 cover. Anyone could vote on the player or players they would like to see on the cover of the game. Voting began on March 29, 2012 with 60 NHL players in a one-on-one vote with two players each and closed on June 4, with over 25 million votes cast worldwide.[5] On June 20, Claude Giroux was crowned the winner at the 2012 NHL Awards in Las Vegas, ahead of Pekka Rinne.[6] The game's cover was released on March 29, 2012. In addition to the actual NHL 13 game, an exclusive "Stanley Cup Collector's Edition" was also released. The Collector's Edition includes five random Hockey Ultimate Team (HUT) player packs from the two 2012 Stanley Cup Finals teams, a Gold Jumbo HUT pack featuring legend Wayne Gretzky, and a Boost pack featuring the CCM RBZ stick[7]. As in NHL 12, Gary Thorne (play-by-play) and Bill Clement (color) commentate the game in NHL 13.[8] This year, for the first time, two playable female characters, Hayley Wickenheiser and Angela Ruggiero, were added.[9] In NHL 12, players could create female characters, but there were no real-world players.[10] On September 20, Gamesindustry.biz reported that NHL 13 had the best first-week sales in the history of the series.[11]