EA and FIFA part ways; EA Sports FC starts in 2023
EA Sports will officially be switching the name of its soccer video games to EA Sports FC starting in 2023. The news officially broke when it was announced that FIFA failed to strike a new licensing agreement with world soccer’s governing body. EA Sports has been making FIFA video games for nearly 3 decades, but that will be no longer the case starting in 2023.
The current FIFA deal with EA was originally going to end after this year’s World Cup in Qatar. However, the deal has been extended and will instead expire after the Women’s World Cup tournament is over next Summer.
One thing that is surely going to take time to get used to is the game no longer having FIFA in its title, but rather EA Sports FC. The name change will ultimately not have any major impacts on the overall game plays, but branding could impact sales. Obviously, EA Sports will lose anything related to FIFA in their games which can be really upsetting to some of the franchise’s fans. However, EA Sports FC will still feature most of the world’s famous clubs and stars due to the fact that they are all a part of separate licensing deals with their teams and leagues.
Over the past 20 years alone, the FIFA video game franchise has generated more than $20 billion in sales. It has been one of the biggest and most successful sports video game franchises of all time which is why this news is so massive and why many FIFA fans might find this news a bit upsetting.
If you have been following recent FIFA news since the last quarter of 2021, you may have saw this coming. Back in October 2021, there were rumors that EA Sports may be forced to change the name of the FIFA franchise if no new licensing deal was met. The odds of a new agreement at the current time looked fairly slim because of how much money the FIFA organization was looking to snag from EA Sports. FIFA currently receives $150 million annually from EA Sports. In the new agreement that FIFA wanted to propose, they were looking for at least $300 million along with various new terms in the licensing agreement.
However, just because FIFA and EA sports are parting ways doesn’t mean that we won’t see a FIFA soccer video game anymore. FIFA plans to release its own video game starting in 2024 and Gianni Infantino, the FIFA president, stated: “I can assure you that the only authentic, real game that has the FIFA name will be the best one available for gamers and football fans.”
Hot. FIFA 22 featured in May's PS Plus lineup. light
It appears that EA Sports will now have a major competitor from FIFA in terms of soccer video games. EA Sports has a lot of experience will creating sports video games so it will be interesting to see how FIFA fares now that they are no longer a part of EA Sports.
Regardless of which soccer video game turns out to be supreme, you don’t have to worry about not getting your soccer fix in. There will be plenty of soccer video games that release over the course of the next handful of years, just none of them will be joint between EA Sports and FIFA any longer.