14 DAY TRIAL // The team working on the Euro 2012 downloadable content for FIFA 12 at EA Sports has explained why it has chosen not to add any sort of gameplay or graphical improvement to the DLC pack that is expected to arrive on home consoles and on the PC on April 24.
Sebastian Enrique, the lead producer working on the Euro 2012 content, has told Eurogamer during an interview that “We felt FIFA 12 gameplay was good enough - it's really good - it's not just good enough, that it allowed us to concentrate on providing a variety of game modes for people to enjoy. Plus, we are so close to whatever comes next.”
Some Euro and World Cup games from EA Sports have been criticized for improving on the same aspects of the core FIFA experience but not going far enough, and the current team wanted to avoid that kind of reaction.
Enrique added, “In FIFA we have a big gameplay group dedicated to working on gameplay on FIFA. With an event title we wouldn't be able to get that. Ever. We could probably get one or two, I wouldn't say improvements but changes here and there. For me, it wasn't worth it.”
The lack of gameplay and graphics changes meant that the development team has more time to focus on the new game modes, on simulating the real-world stadiums that are included and on making sure that they get the right details for the national teams that are part of Euro 2012.
Fans have also criticized the coming DLC for eliminating the qualifiers mode, which allowed fans of national teams that are not in the real-world tournament to change history, but the developers saw that almost no one used that mode so they decided their resources were better spent elsewhere, like on the new Expedition game mode.