EA’s masterpiece, FIFA, will be newly named next year. FIFA 23, which will be released on September 30, is the last title that calls FIFARA. The reason is that the license agreement between the EA and the FIFA has ended. The specific reason is not officially revealed, but it is reported that the EA decided to create a new brand because it was judged that the license royalty presented by the Football Federation was excessive.

For EA, it may be a pity that you have to leave your name for the past 30 years. Apart from this, however, even if the new name ‘EA Sports FC’ is attached, this title will not be shaken as well as soccer games as well as the global game market. The reason is compressed into three main categories. It is a strong license that has been accumulated in the past, the lack of competitive title in the market, and a 30-year development know-how that has accumulated based on its unique position.

Let’s look at the license first. Based on FIFA 23, EA has more than 300 individual licenses in addition to the World Cup. Specifically, you can meet 100 stadiums around the world, 30 or more leagues, 700 teams, and more than 19,000 players. The main leagues include the UEFA Champions League, the UEFA Europa League, the UEFA Europa Conference League, the Conmebol Riberitadores, the Conmebol Sudamericana, the Premier League, the Bundesliga, and La Liga. It also secured the first women’s professional league, Berkeley FA FA Women’s Super League and Division 1 Akema.

FIFA

In addition, on July 26, the Italian professional football team Juventus, which ended with Konami, and on the 3rd, announced on the 3rd that they signed a many years of partnership with Lariga, Spanish professional football. Previously, EA has been actively promoting license contracts, which are the core of live-action soccer games, apart from the International Football Federation, and is moving quickly to the next work. This can be interpreted as indirectly revealing the confidence that you can maintain its superiority without the name ‘FIFA’. In addition, the World Cup is also open every four years when the tournament is held.

In addition, the FIFA series is virtually no competitive if it is limited to real-time soccer games except simulation such as football managers. Football games, which have a high recognition in the global market, are compressed into EA’s FIFA and Konami’s E-football (Winning Eleven). However, EA has lost its market competitiveness due to the active license of EA and negative evaluation of the game itself.

In fact, the E-football 2022 version, which was released in September last year, had only 25 points in the PC and 34 points in the PS5, and the players’ broken modeling was so coarse that it was so poor that it was floating like a sort of memes. Konami also secured additional licenses and updated the 1.0.0 update to improve overall problems and gameplay in April this year, but there was no dramatic reversal.

One of these situations is the performance of April-June this year between EA and Konami. First, EA’s sales increased 14% from the same period last year, and operating profit also increased 37%. In response, EA explained that sports games such as FIFA and F1 led the performance, and in particular, FIFA explained that the average number of users of the weekly and monthly users increased by nearly 40% from the previous year. In the case of Konami, digital entertainment sales, excluding arcade and slot machines, rose 1.9%, but this led to the Yu-Gi-Oh Master Dual.

Even if there is no specific explanation, it is widely known that FIFA is superior to E-football. In addition, EA has also continued to invest in improving development power because FIFA is a major sales source. This is also revealed in the new FIFA 23, released in September. At the center is a new technology hyper-motion 2, which is based on machine learning based on the 11th and 11th matches of the actual players.

Based on this, based on more than 6,000 animations, which are twice as long as the previous work, the attackers, defenders, and goalkeepers are more realistic. In addition, ‘Power Shot’, which can reproduce the most powerful and impressive shots, new dribbling systems that enhance the response to the ball, new defense elements such as a more diverse pass, back heel tackle, etc. will be introduced. The characters respond more tactically.

In addition, EA has been developing soccer games for 30 years under the name FIFA. Game companies that have accumulated this development power for soccer games are compressed into EA and Konami, and Konami needs more periods and investments to increase competitiveness. Therefore, it is practically difficult to complete a soccer game with EA FIFA Series level in the short term. The International Football Federation said it plans to end a license agreement with EA and introduce a new FIFA game with other partners, but it is questioned whether the game that has been released can form a tight competition with EA Sports FC.