It might feel like a long time until the next FIFA game hits the market, but since the series has received a new installment every year since the mid-'90s, a new FIFA is never really that far away. Various reports indicate that the long-running football sim will be getting a serious shakeup in the near future though, with hints that EA Sports might even opt to drop the FIFA brand once its current deal expires.
Whether that happens or not, and what the series will be called instead, remains to be seen. For the time being, it would appear that EA will be sticking with FIFA. That's according to insider Tom Henderson who reported via xfire that FIFA 23 is a-go, and it will have the same name as always. It will be a different FIFA to the games we've known before it though, in some pretty exciting ways should these reports turn out to be accurate.
The biggest way is that according to Henderson, FIFA 23 will be the first game in the series to supports cross-platform play. While FIFA has been available on pretty much all major platforms for a very long time, EA has neglected to let players on different platforms compete with and against one another. That all changes with this year's installment apparently, and those of you playing FIFA on PlayStation may finally be able to compete against those playing on Xbox and PC.
Even though EA and FIFA continue to lose the rights to certain Italian teams to eFootball, it has actually acquired more rights for the next game according to Henderson's report. FIFA 23 will apparently include both the men's and women's World Cups. It's unclear whether that means all nations eligible to compete with a full qualification process, or just the finals and teams that qualified, with a few notable absentees.
It seems, for the time being at least, FIFA will continue to be FIFA, and not whatever new brand EA may have planned for it. Somewhat surprising since as recently as last week, EA's CEO labeled FIFA nothing more than four letters and went as far as to say the instantly recognizable global football organization is impeding the series' progress. Perhaps in 18 months we'll all be buying EA Soccer '24 in place of FIFA.
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