14 DAY TRIAL // FIFA is one of the biggest franchises Electronic Arts puts out every year and the edition released in 2009 is quite an improvement over the previous ones, introducing a better and smoother dribbling system and a more complex tactics section. But if there's one market that still seems unassailable for the FIFA franchise, it's Japan, a nation that loves football to a large extent but ignores simulation titles.
Peter Moore, who is the head of the EA Sports division, has written on his corporate blog that “I appreciate this is a unique culture that has very different tastes in entertainment. But while Western movies and music can be extremely popular with younger consumers, foreign-developed games (or yoge, as they are called) have an extremely difficult time breaking through with Japanese gamers.”
This has made the Platinum rating received by FIFA 10 from the all-important Famitsu magazine all the more of a surprise and Moore is saying that the development team will be working to make sure that the football simulation becomes even more popular on the Japanese market.
The biggest selling titles in Japan for quite a few weeks have been Pokemon remakes, which have so far sold more than 1 million units since they debuted. Probably only the release of Final Fantasy XIII from Square Enix will get the Pokemon games down from the top spot.
Moore mentions that Japanese developers are working on FIFA 10 and that each year was disappointing to the team as their game got to one of the top spots in the charts in North America and in Europe, while failing to make an impression in The Land of the Rising Sun. FIFA 10 faces tough competition in the football simulation genre from Pro Evolution Soccer 10, which is being developed by Konami, a title that usually does well in Japan.