With FIFA 23's recent debut, one of EA Sports' signature franchises is back in the news with its annual release. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, sports games reached all-new, impressive heights. Featuring bold new 3D graphics, realistic-looking player models, and real-world physics, this wave of sports games changed the genre forever, and EA is one of the biggest publishers behind that movement. But now, two decades later, EA Sports, and in particular its FIFA series, has a bit of a different public reception, one which is about to change yet again.
While the gaming industry loves to criticize and poke fun at the yearly FIFA releases, there's no denying that it's one of the biggest entertainment franchises out there, bringing in tons of money and fans every single year from sales and FIFA Ultimate Team microtransactions. Over the last few decades, EA has built FIFA from the ground-up to be the most popular soccer game on the market, but starting next year, EA is dropping the FIFA branding, which could be a big mistake.
EA Could Hurt Itself By Dropping FIFA
Debuting all the way back in 1993 with FIFA International Soccer for the Sega Genesis, EA Sports' FIFA series is almost 30 years old. Over the last three decades, EA has grown the FIFA gaming brand exponentially, with each early entry in the series pushing the technical boundaries of the time. By the early 2000s, FIFA had already cemented itself as the leading soccer game on the market, and became the go-to choice for fans of the sport. Now, in 2022, FIFA is a household name. This is also thanks to the actual organization and its appearance at the forefront of the soccer industry, but EA's annual series helps to cement the brand even further.
For 30 years, EA and FIFA have mutually benefited one another, but all that is about to change. Beginning in 2023, EA is ending its partnership with FIFA, and dropping its name from its annual soccer series. Instead, EA's series will now be named EA Sports FC. This could prove to be a costly mistake on EA's part for a number of reasons, the biggest of which is brand recognizability. Put simply, the general audience knows what FIFA is, they don't know what EA Sports FC is.
As is the case with most annual sports titles, and even other franchises like Call of Duty, FIFA's main audience has always been the casual gamer. While there are many hardcore gamers that play, typically these games target people that don't play as often, but make an exception for the yearly FIFA release. For a group that only follows gaming passively, a massive rebrand could throw off fans of the franchise. So, when it comes to EA Sports FC's eventual release next year, it seems pretty likely that a good portion of FIFA's usual audience won't be aware of the branding change, which could cause a pretty substantial drop in initial game sales. To make matters worse, FIFA is still planning on using its name to continue the series, meaning that eventually both a FIFA and an EA Sports FC game will release at the same time.
On top of the branding confusion, dropping the FIFA license could also mean that EA loses the right to use a range of teams. It seems as though this won't be too much of an issue, however, as EA has already signed partnership deals with La Liga, the Premier League, Serie A, MLS, and the Bundesliga, so the game should still feature a plethora of popular teams.