Early access sales of EA Sports FC 24, the renamed FIFA game, are up 25 per cent year-over-year, according to a paywalled Financial Times article. While it’s still early days for the title, it means more than 6.8 million players tested out the rebranded released during its initial launch week – and many will have podded out for the pricey Ultimate Edition. It’s worth noting that ten hours of gameplay could also be enjoyed with a subscription to EA Play.
EA Sports famously decided to break away from its 30-year relationship with FIFA, which was costing the company upwards of €140 million per year. It’s still too early to declare the name change a success, of course, but the publisher has seriously upped its marketing for this release – presumably leveraging all the cash it’s no longer putting into the pocket of football’s governing body.
[source ft.com]
Comments 27
Nothing is certain except death, taxes and EA Sports football dominating the charts each year. Still hoping they will use a new engine sometime this gen, game don't look that different than 7 years ago
It’s pretty good. Slower which is a good change. Not a total revolution but still. Hopeful that dumping FIFA will work out in the long run. Plus I got Henrik Larsson out a random pack on the first day playing it.
It’s a yearly game, so even if a few people buy it late or even miss it this year altogether by this time next year anyone who wants to play it will know, and every year after that, so the name change will be forgotten and irrelevant before long.
Ridiculous headline... of course they did, just not any more.
Intrigued to see what FIFA do next. Presumably try to sell the license to another game studio who would love to develop and publish FIFA 25. If I was Konami, I know what I'd do...
Unpopular opinion, but PES/eFootball still has better on-field gameplay, but I accept that everything else is now garbage.
It's the best football game they've put out yet. I can't speak the ultimate team experience, because who wants to suffer that rigged game mode, but otherwise it's a powerful return to form
I bought it and really like it... My only gripe is that the commentary some how seems worse that last year.
I started a new career mode, I won my first game of the season 13-0 (I obviously needed to up the difficulty level)
In the 2nd game of the season the commentary said I'd be pleased with my start to the Season but would be really disappointed with the way I defended in the previous game!!!!
I know it's not real and they can't have commentary that covers every eventually but seriously.....come on they can do better than that surely
I mean theres not exactly any competition anymore since Konami made a mess of PES
@zhoont for sure you are joking, right?
Well I can't see a 'Fifa' game on the Market to compete and Konami messed up the only competition EA had in the Football Game market so what choice do gamers have for this year?
Either stick with the 'old' games or buy the latest, which is basically the 'same' game without the Fifa branding anyway. Its not as if some other Publisher has a competing game to challenge EA and with Konami messing up, its just pushing those Fans to buy the ONLY other option.
Unless another Footy game comes out to challenge EA, the 'loss' of the Fifa brand certainly won't hurt them and the lack of competition will only help them...
If they're looking for another name to put on the box, mine can be had for much cheaper than 140m Euros a year... just saying.
@Topov81 Yep efootball is still my go to.
Now if they finally added Master League it would be perfect.
Will be interested to see how this game reviews given EA was indicating last year that the Fifa licence stopped them innovating in the ways they wanted.
First 'fifa' game I have really played in a long time...they all seem the same to me...enjoying it somewhat for what it is....still miles behind efootball(pes) gameplay wise ...if only you the 2 games could have a baby because FIFA is so much better everywhere else
Of course they needed it to get well known. Now though it doesn't matter.
@feiozzo98 I've played these games since FIFA 14, and I've got thousands of hours and probably fewer than 100 in ultimate team. No, I'm not joking. It's the best game yet.
@dimi New engine unfortunately probably isn’t going to fix anything… The current FIFA are running on the current version of Frostbite, and we’ve seen what the engine is capable off from a visual standpoint. This is just what the developers chooses the ship the game like given the many platforms and time crunch.
@Topov81 Yeah, eFootball’s physics based gameplay is brilliant everywhere apart from skill moves, which I find horrible to execute and not in a challenging way which it should be.
fifa fans will buy just about anything that resembles football. makes me wonder why ea puts any effort into these games whatsoever if they, in theory, could pump out a game with less than half the budget and expect similar sales. the sales of fifa games are inelastic to quality. arguably, it is the same situation with the 2k games.
@Topov81 Unpopular with who? lol
“You up for some FC?! …uhhhh” I think people will continue calling it FIFA they know what they’re up to with that.
Very much enjoying EA FC…The slower gameplay leads to a more thoughtful approach and I find defending harder but overall it is a far more satisfying package..the presentation is sublime and most importantly it feels like real football…also I am pleased that I am not putting a penny into the greedy claws of the corrupt bloated obscenity that is FIFA anymore
Can't keep the Europeans away from their footie, no matter what they call it.
That’s cool and all but where’s that NCAA Football game we was told about a couple years back
I think it's early to tell. They did try to push this one and it sounded like FIFA had another developer interested. What will happen when a game called FIFA not by EA hits the market? How will this title be received without the licensing agreements? This will be a long winded response we won't know until a couple of yearly releases.
@dimi When games like FIFA (erm, EA Sports FC), Madden, Call of Duty, NBA 2K, GTAV just keep selling no matter what, there's no incentive at all to change. When you are making billions of dollars by putting in minimum effort, why would you ever do more?
"pod out" isn't actually a phrase is it?
Paywalled articles from newspapers I always punch into archive (dot) today. 99 out of 100 times, it will neatly take care of the block.
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