Calling back to the days when we lived our own football career through a game is a real tear-jerker. Those were the golden days when we, as children, lived through every moment of a football game without any worries in the world. EA Sports really went big and perhaps wanted us to relive those bygone days feeling nostalgic. With the recent announcement of the split between FIFA and EA Sports, the recurring days of virtual football excellence will not ever be the same. The decision to split was purely corporate. But the legacy which once was will never be again.
In a nearly 30-year run, the FIFA 23 game that Electronic Arts plans to release this autumn will be the final one to feature the logo of FIFA, governing international football. The football-focused EA Sports franchise will be known as EA Sports FC starting in July 2023.
The letters’ FIFA’ nowadays stand for a video game for millions of people. This franchise shaped the lives of professional players and casual players, as well as football as a sport. Even gamers who had no other connection to the sport learned about its players and teams through their virtual clones. The game has produced more than $20 billion in sales over the previous 20 years, making EA Sports and FIFA the beneficiaries of this kind of widespread use.
EA released the first-ever football game under the moniker of FIFA in the year of 1994. It was an immediate and massive hit among the target audience. With time, the game progressed. While most sports video games struggled to garner a steady and healthy amount of player base, FIFA didn’t really fumble that much. Numerous video game enthusiasts purchase and play FIFA each year, spending additional funds on in-game add-ons via Ultimate Team. The most successful video game of any genre across all platforms and the PC is FIFA, the greatest football game in the world. As a result, it generates billions of dollars in revenue annually for its publisher Electronic Arts (EA), with the FIFA Ultimate Team (FUT) game mode accounting for a large portion of that money.
The consequences of the split between EA and FIFA are going to be anything but stagnant. With each early instalment of the series pushing the technological envelope at the time, EA has massively expanded the FIFA video game brand over the past three decades. FIFA had established itself as the top football game on the market by the early 2000s and was the preferred option for football aficionados. In 2022, FIFA is a well-known brand. This is also due to the organization itself and its prominence in the football market, but EA’s yearly series aids in further establishing the brand.
EA and FIFA have benefitted one another for the last 30 years. However, the split might end up being an expensive oversight, mostly on EA’s part. FIFA has provided brand recognition to EA for as long as they were partners. According to EA’s annual report, it sold games for $1.6 billion (£1.1 billion) between April 2020 and March 2021. FIFA had a significant contribution to this revenue sum. A significant rebrand might confuse franchise supporters who just casually follow the game industry. Therefore, it seems rather probable that a sizable chunk of FIFA’s typical audience won’t be aware of the branding shift when EA Sports FC eventually launches next year. This might result in a pretty significant decline in initial game sales. It gets worse since FIFA still intends to continue the series under its brand, which will eventually result in the simultaneous publication of an EA Sports FC game and a FIFA title.
On the other hand, FIFA will also face a backlash as a result of the split. Even though the organization is still willing to make video games with their name on it, the publisher of the game itself will not be the same. For the entirety of the game’s existence, EA garnered certain confidence from the players in the game. A change in that aspect will have a massive negative impact on that confidence. Just like any consumer product, customer confidence plays a crucial role in the branding and revenue of a video game as well.
The decision of the break up between EA and FIFA came as a shock to most. The partnership seemed like a bond made by the vow of marriage that says, ‘Till death do us part’. The split will obviously change the future of both these organizations in a big way. How their plans for their game will pan out remains a great mystery. But for nostalgia’s sake, we can always hope for a silver lining.
Author- Shiddhartho Zaman
