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EA made the decision to bring the 2014 FIFA World Cup game to only the PS3 and Xbox 360 in order to hit the biggest user bases, but the game’s producer admits it was disappointing not to work on Xbox One and PS4.
“So we started off with the initial concept and the thought that it would be a across both of those [console generations] but then as things progressed, it became a decision that we have only a certain amount of resources and we need to focus those resources to get to the most people as we possibly can,” Matthew Prior, line producer at EA, told Sportra.com.
The decision to focus only on PS3 and Xbox 360 was decided early in 2013.
“Nobody wanted to make a gen-4 title more than me, believe me, I mean it was disappointing in that sense but at the same time it was the right decision in terms of getting it to the most people,” explained Prior.
By the time early sales figures for the new consoles started to be reported, it was too late to bring the World Cup game to the platforms.
“Once the numbers started rolling in that’s way too late in the cycle for us to make a decision, because these games are massive, they take a lot of effort,” said Prior.
“Unfortunately we weren’t really able to react to that increased uptake, I think everybody was taken aback pleasantly by how many people bought the consoles. So I think it was a kind of good news story in that event, but unfortunately it was at a time where it passed where we could do a proper product.”
It may have been possible to push out a rushed job, but Prior says this wouldn’t have been acceptable.
“You know, you could have potentially rushed one out, or whatever, but you know we wanted to kind of do it justice and all the rest of it. You don’t want to kind of rush out some half-finished coat of paint kind of deal.
“So all of that kind of happened way past any time we could really action on it, so it’s good news in the sense that the uptake’s huge, bad in the sense that we weren’t able to leverage that and turn it around.”
EA Sports 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil will be released April 17.
For more from Prior head over to Sportra.com.
