At one point, making a good sports video game was almost impossible. The graphics on early consoles and PC couldn’t deliver the right look and feel of certain games, and the programming prowess was limited in the beginning. If you know the history of Madden NFL, you’ll know that the original game designer wanted to trim down” the game so that the platforms could handle it, but John Madden wouldn’t let that happen. Eventually, things picked up and now sports video games are one of the biggest markets in the world, especially for the FIFA series that has continued to dominate for a number of years. FIFA 23 just came out, and within one week, it continued its dominance.
In a report from Electronic Arts, the game was said to have been played by 10.3 million players in just its first week. That’s over 1.2 million more than the previous game did in its first ten days! That may seem like a small jump, but it’s not. Instead, that’s a 10% increase, and that’s something any gaming company and publisher would appreciate title to title.
Not surprisingly, the team wanted to praise the good fortune of the game.
“The response from our fans has been nothing short of incredible, and we’re thrilled that our community is playing with their favorite players and teams across FIFA 23 in record numbers,” said EA Sports general manager Nick Wlodyka.
Nick continued and said that a critical part of FIFA 23′s success was the addition of the women’s soccer teams and the World Cup. He also noted that more future updates to the women’s roster and gameplay would be coming.
It has to be said that the game is vast in scope. Just the player count for the game; in terms of players you can control, there are over 19,000 players! Add that to the 30 leagues you can be in, the 100 stadiums you can play in with 700 teams to choose from, and you can see why people are drawn to this game.
Of course, there is an irony to this game’s success. For a while now, EA and FIFA have been discontent over licensing issues. FIFA is not the most reputable sports body out there; they’ve been mired in controversy for decades. But when it came to the licensing rights to use their name, EA Sports had enough. That’s why FIFA 23 is the last collaboration between them. That’s right, next time around, it’ll be known as EA Sports FC and drop all FIFA support and naming from the title. Unfortunately for them, that leaves FIFA trying to make their own soccer title, which will be difficult.
So, on the one hand, their last game was a huge success, but on the other, it’s the last success in the line.
Source: VGC
