Peter Moore wil dat je altijd bezig bent met FIFA

Gamers en ontwikkelaars vragen zich constant af of er ook andere opties zijn dan ieder jaar weer die nieuwe sportgame op disc te kopen.  EA Sports directeur Peter Moore heeft daar over nagedacht en wil het met FIFA anders aanpakken.

Moore is voornemens de jaarlijkse release van FIFA op disc te schrappen en de serie een meer aanhoudende online rol te geven. "Personally I still think there'll be discs five years from now. But generally yes, of course, I think there will come a time when FIFA is less a disc that you wait for in late September/early October, and more something that we provide 365 days a year."

"We need to provide that persistent world, maybe sometimes powered by discs, maybe on social networks, or the cloud or whatever. That's the team's vision, that no matter where you are or what you're using, there's a FIFA experience to be had, it all links together, it lifts your level up and identifies your status."

De EA Sports directeur vindt dat FIFA uitermate geschikt is voor deze ontwikkeling, omdat voetbal in de meeste landen ontzettend populair is. "Football for most of us is pretty constant," he explained. "This year there was, what, a 15 day off-season. And even then we were thinking about it and reading about it. That's the space football occupies in our lives and that's how we've got to look at it."

En dit verandert natuurlijk het business-model voor EA. Hoe dat er uit komt te zien weet Moore nog niet, daar zullen ze nog over na moeten denken. "The business model's simple: you accept that the vast majority of users will never pay you a penny and you learn to be cool with that. Plus you get people like me who want deeper engagement, and can't sit still waiting for their three daily match credits or whatever, so we pay to accelerate our gameplay and create better teams, and that's nice but it's not really the point." 

Op dit moment heeft EA al een kleine stap richting de toekomst van de FIFA-franchise gemaakt met het spel FIFA Superstars op de netwerksite Facebook.  "What you are now starting to see is some linkage between FIFA Superstars and unlocking some features in FIFA 11. It's baby steps towards persistence and presence for a full FIFA eco system."