14 DAY TRIAL // One of the reasons EA has managed to get a leg up on its main competitor in the virtual football arena, Konami, is the company's dedication to bringing real-life content and the engagement that the actual sport delivers to consoles and PCs.
One of the initiatives that enabled the FIFA series to surpass Pro Evolution Soccer in popularity is FIFA Ultimate Team, which EA Chief Executive Officer Peter Moore believes is the main reason for the series' popularity, aside from the developer's dedication to realism.
"We spend a lot of time and do a lot of work making sure we get the right licences because people want to play as the real players in the real teams in the real stadiums and the real leagues, so there are a lot of people focused on that.
"Having the FIFA licence also gives us World Cup, which is always a great platform every four years to accelerate where we need to be, and we always find that the year after a World Cup our engagement numbers in our FIFA franchise increase," Moore tells CVG.
"The idea of capturing the emotion of what football is all about, which has always been difficult to do in sports games, is a big feature of FIFA 15. As we've looked at the production of football now, World Cup in particular, with 32 high definition cameras, I'm looking at player grimaces when a free kick goes wide or their expressions when a goal is scored, and we need to capture that in the game itself," he continues.
To make sure that players get immersed in an authentic football atmosphere, the team did their best to bring the crowds to life, even going as far as implementing the individual chants in the stadiums, and making each individual spectator different, not simply having crowds go up and down in unison.
Furthermore, the team got the individual 3D scans of the player heads down to a tee, and particularly the players who have come in through transfers of late, in order to offer fans a truly authentic experience. EA was very involved in it due to the fact that their fans are also invested in their franchise, as invested as they are in the actual sport.
"Getting the stadiums right is a big deal for us as well, especially when you have three promoted clubs coming into the Premier League, so the FIFA team set out to Turf Moor, Loftus Road and the King Power Stadium, to make sure we recreate those and that everything is rendered beautifully in 3D and high definition and that's our relationship with the Premier League," Moore concludes.
FIFA 15 is coming out in September, for the PC, current- and last generation consoles, as well as in a legacy format for the Wii, Nintendo 3DS and PlayStation Vita platforms.