Has FIFA Reached its expiry date?

With the release of EA Sports FC 24 just having passed, many people will have been asking themselves the very same question, should I really be spending this much money on an ever-dying game? The demise has been a steady one, with in my opinion the last enjoyable game in the franchise being FIFA 19.

I’m sure many others have a similar opinion. And despite the quality of the actual gameplay remaining similar every year players like myself have purchased the game regardless. Whilst FIFA isn’t technically pay-to-win, ask any player and they would instantly agree that it is.

Electronic Arts is an incredibly greedy corporation that bank on the loyalty of consumers instead of improving their games to make a profit. The rising price of the game is also an alarming prospect. On my Xbox Series S, the price of the standard game is £62.99 with EA access (£70 without), and whilst I understand that most games being released these days are of a similar price, it still seems excessive. They make so much money from the purchase of FIFA points, or now FC points that there has never been a need for them to increase their price.

If the game improved drastically each year then maybe an increase in price would seem necessary, but the past two FIFA’s especially felt like they were deliberately undeveloped whilst EA waited for the ties with FIFA to end. They argue that this will bring more licensing and more promotions in FUT campaigns, improving the game in general. I highly doubt that it was FIFA holding EA back this whole time though.

The only game mode I have enjoyed playing these past few years is pro clubs, and that never seems to get any attention given to it at the start of a new launch, or notable updates throughout the year. The only game mode given any attention is Ultimate Team, which is understandable given that it makes them the most money, but this mode has also been ruined by EAs greed.

Promos used to feel like a genuinely special event, where special cards held some value, however in the past few FIFA’s there have been promos literally every week from the launch of the game, which is just a way of them selling more packs. This has ruined the whole FUT market in the process, meaning that rare gold cards lose their value incredibly quickly. The idea of everything being more affordable sounds great at first, but there is little value to packing most cards after only a month or so, meaning that the only way people can really make coins is to pack a lot of decent players using FIFA points or to engage in trading which is deemed illegitimate by EA themselves.

Everyone having good teams also just makes the game boring and stale after little time at all. It used to be so hard to pack or obtain good players that you might only have a few in your team, meaning that games were more interesting. The addition of women into the Ultimate Team game mode is also a controversial one, of course they have paid all media outlets to be positive about this addition, but if you asked the FIFA community, I guarantee that a strong majority would be against having men’s and women’s players combined in Ultimate Team. This isn’t necessarily my opinion, but I know that it is held by many others.

Does that say something about the demographic of FIFA players, maybe so, but it is a big addition considering they haven’t released a game that has maintained significant popularity past Christmas in a long time. After the promotion Team of the Year, the rich get richer, and the rest of the players become bored with the gameplay. I remain optimistic for the future of EA Sports FC though and hope that they learn from some past mistakes. The addition of evolution cards in Ultimate Team is definitely a positive one, however once again EA may have tarnished a good idea by making it slightly pay to win.

The catch is that to unlock the best evolution card you have to purchase it by either paying 50,000 coins or 1,000 FIFA points. Despite the small gripe this is definitely a step in the right direction and will hopefully give players an incentive to continue playing the game throughout the whole cycle. I look forward to seeing what EA do going forward, and hope that the EA FC series can be as good as the FIFA everyone knew and loved.