I was discussing with some friends this week about how FIFA has been going strong for so long despite the annual releases, with little time between versions, and selling SO MUCH.
I don’t know if you know this, but a considerable part of the money raised by football clubs around the world comes from… Official shirts. Crazy, right? Clubs make literally hundreds of millions of dollars, and a good part of that comes from selling shirts. According to the subject matter expert website The Face , Manchester United alone makes over 120 million pounds sterling per year with the sale of official shirts.
But how? Well, if you’re a fan, you need the latest jersey, or you run the risk of feeling embarrassed about going to the stadium to watch your team’s matches. That said, imagine how many players and sponsors (large or small) change every year. For every change, well, you’re going to need a new shirt! And they are not cheap. But hey, you are a fan. And that reminds me of the article I wrote here about “Share of Heart”.
Back to FIFA, this effect is more or less the same, but with a really interesting nuance – EA treats each release as if it were a test run for the next. Since everything is online these days, you can collect data for Business Intelligence and metrics from each individual player who consumes the product, thus allowing you to use algorithms that help guide what to do on your next release. FIFA 20 features the VOLTA mode, for example, which is nothing less than FIFA Street. It’s so obvious that I wouldn’t be surprised if all of this was developed by a bot. Of course, it’s not even close to perfect, but you can tell the game has evolved (yes, Darwin!) when he decides what to do differently in the next release. If the players like it, it’s preserved and polished. If they don’t like it, then that is discarded. It’s the evolution, baby!
Amazing, right? So with that fans will want the next version, because it will have an improved version of anything they found fantastic in the previous game. Brilliant business tactics, and A LOT of resource investment, of course. So will FIFA ever be perfect? Clearest and most honest answer possible: No. Why? Simple: The football market, its brands and players. FIFA will always have the problem of not getting the latest teams, players and sponsors. Updating all these real-time changes to all of this is kind of “easy”, but negotiating the rights to all of this is where the real nightmare lies that makes it unfeasible, plus the fact that the game’s release date won’t wait for this or that negotiation to end. Procedurally, this EA strategy ensures FIFA’s tendency to reach a definitive release, but that will never happen due to the fluidity of licensing agreements.
Anyway I am very interested to know what will happen with FIFA 21, as some championships are being canceled and/or suffering serious changes, mainly due to the calendar. What do you think?
