The latest installment in the FIFA series, FIFA 23 has been incredibly successful for the publisher. In an official press release, Electronic Arts announced that the game had the biggest launch period in EA Sports’ FIFA franchise history.
According to EA, more than 10.3 million players logged in to the game during its first week on the market.
“The response from our fans has been nothing short of incredible, and we’re thrilled that our community is playing with their favorite players and teams across FIFA 23 in record numbers,” said SVP GM of EA Sports FC Nick Wlodyka.
EA also went ahead and took the opportunity to explain all the features that helped the game to reach this huge milestone.
Furthermore, EA also announced what players could expect from FIFA 23 in the future. Nick Wlodyka added,
“With both the Men’s and Women’s World Cups, and exciting updates to our women’s club football content in-game still yet to come, we’re just getting started on providing players with the most authentic and immersive experience yet.”
FIFA 23 will probably be EA’s last soccer game to bear the name “FIFA” in its title. This could be the reason why FIFA 23 did so well at launch.
As previously announced, EA and FIFA are ending their three decades-long partnership this year. The next EA soccer game will launch with the EA Sports FC name instead. Fans believe EA is making a big mistake by ditching FIFA’s name from its upcoming soccer game.
Multiple reports say FIFA asked for 1 billion USD every four years from EA to let the company keep using FIFA’s name in its games. However, Andrew Wilson, EA’s CEO, claimed all EA gets from FIFA is “four letters on the front of the box”.
Despite FIFA 23’s early success, the game hasn’t had the perfect launch. The game was review-bombed by critics at launch because of many issues. In addition, gamers are angry at EA for putting next to no effort into bringing new features to the Nintendo Switch version of the game.