Who'd a thunk it? Electronic Arts, long-time purveyor of FIFA-branded
sports games, has apparently decided to go its own way and is ditching
the FIFA name. * Future games in the franchise will instead be labeled
as "EA Sports Football Club". Despite not having wanting anything to
do with FIFA anymore, the video games will still be licensing the
names of all the various individual football (soccer) teams and
players. Thus, aside from the conspicuous absence of FIFA branding,
from a players perspective very little will change.
This has been brewing for months and months, as EA and FIFA have
jockeyed for better licensing fees (FIFA wants more money, EA wants to
pay less for using the brand). It was suggested back in 2021 that EA
might drop the branding but this was widely seen as a bargaining
maneuver; EA asserting that they could do without the branding and
still be sure of success. It goes to show how powerful video-game
publishers are nowadays, that they can face off with FIFA and expect
to come out victorious. Of course, seeing as how awful both
corporations are, it's really a matter of "whoever wins, we lose".
Headline aside, it's not really a settled matter yet. This news is
based on the announcement of future titles rather than an actual
briefing from EA and/or FIFA. So this could still all be a bargaining
point by EA, a raising of the stakes and an insistence that if FIFA
remains intransigent, they are more than willing to publish without
their partnership. In the face of this news, FIFA may back down and
accept EA's demands, at which point the titles may be changed back. It
will be interesting to see if FIFA blinks first, or - if not - who
they will pass the brand to. There aren't any real competitors to EA's
sports titles these days, after all.
---------------------------------------------------
*
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/03/report-ea-sports-to-finally-move-forward-with-fifa-less-soccer-game/
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)