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, 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. The game was unveiled at the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2012 (E3 2012), which took place from June 5-7, 2012. The demo of the game was released on the Xbox Live Marketplace and PlayStation Store on August 21 and 22, 2012. There was a vote to decide which player would be on the NHL 13 cover. Anyone could vote on the player or players they wanted to see on the cover of the game. Voting began on March 29, 2012 with 60 NHL players in a single elimination vote with two players each and concluded on June 4. Over 25 million votes were cast worldwide. On June 20, Claude Giroux was named the winner ahead of Pekka Rinne at the 2012 NHL Awards in Las Vegas. In addition to the actual NHL 13 game, an exclusive "Stanley Cup Collector's Edition" was also released. The Collector's Edition contains five random Hockey Ultimate Team (HUT) player packs from the two 2012 Stanley Cup Finals teams, a Gold Jumbo HUT Pack featuring the legend Wayne Gretzky and a Boost Pack with the CCM RBZ Stick. As in NHL 12, NHL 13 will also feature Gary Thorne (play-by-play) and Bill Clement (color) commentating the game. This year, for the first time, there are two playable female characters, Hayley Wickenheiser and Angela Ruggiero. In NHL 12, players could create female characters, but there were no real players. On September 20, Gamesindustry.biz reported that NHL 13 achieved the best first-week sales figures in the history of the series.