FIFA 23’s Teams of the Season (TOTS) release dates seem to have been leaked early.
If you didn’t know, this particular TOTS is somewhat special as this will be the last association football game that EA will be licensing under the FIFA name. Starting with FIFA International Soccer for the Sega Genesis in 1993, EA’s FIFA video games have become a household name, one of the foundational games that built EA, one of the most influential sports video games, and one of the guaranteed annual seller in the industry, perhaps even more so than Call of Duty.
As reported by Insider Gaming, these are the dates for the upcoming TOTS:
- Premiere League TOTS – April 18, 2023
- Unknown – April 21, 2023
- Bundesliga TOTS – April 25, 2023
- Community Team TOTS – April 28, 2023
- LaLiga TOTS – May 2, 2023
- Premier League – May 5, 2023 [Update since original report]
Insider gaming further speculates that EFL is the unknown TOTS that will be announced on April 21, 2023. They originally speculated the Saudi Pro League would be releasing on May 5, 2023, but it is now unclear what date they would be set on.
Team of the Season is a unique campaign in FIFA 23 Ultimate Team, themed around the best players and teams in the 2022-2023 association football season, across the different leagues.
What happens in this time is select players get ratings upgrades to reflect their achievements for the season, making them the highest rated players in FIFA 23 Ultimate Team.
EA seems internally ready to move on from the FIFA license. We had reported their plans to take their association football video game franchise in a new direction when they launch EA Sports FC, the new branding for the franchise moving forward.
While EA’s language had been vague at the time, it’s likely that they were being restricted because FIFA didn’t want their players to be seen placed in certain situations. To make a parallel with racing games, car companies didn’t license their vehicles to games that featured destructible cars, such as Burnout, for years. The reason for this being they wanted those licensed games to serve as promotion for their vehicles, like the Gran Turismo franchise has done.
So EA may be looking at gameplay changes that could make these real football players look bad? They could be adding elements that would see the players getting hurt (or maybe, faking getting hurt). Or, they could be overhauling TOTS, to a degree that is no longer realistic, but would be better for gameplay.
We will find out what EA has planned soon enough. In the meantime, and for the last time, FIFA 23 is still playable on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and Microsoft Windows via EA’s client.
