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EA has put “some real distance” between FIFA and rival football video game title PES, EA Sports president Peter Moore has said.
Speaking yesterday at an event held at Premier League stadium Stamford Bridge to officially unveil FIFA Online – the upcoming free-to-play web-based version of FIFA – Moore described FIFA 10’s performance as “phenomenal”.
Last year, FIFA 10 released to critical acclaim. In our review, we called it “the best FIFA ever created”, giving it a 9/10 score.
In comparison, Konami’s PES 2010 struggled to improve on the disappointing PES 2009, scoring a 7/10 in our review.
“It is unbelievably difficult in the world of iterative sports titles to get these kinds of review scores,” said Moore.
“These are the types of scores that games that are three or four years in development get, that have massive budgets, that allow character development that is free, and massive worlds. You think of the shooters and the RPGs that get these kind of scores. These scores don’t happen, typically, in sports. How does it happen? Because of the investment in technology, the investment in extra resources, the building of a tremendous marketing program around that.”
Moore revealed 300 million FIFA 10 connected game sessions have been played by fans since October. That astonishing figure, he said, was “growing to the tune of millions per day”.
“It’s been a tremendous year for us with our FIFA franchise – number one around the world; made tremendous strides in a lot of markets, in particular here in Europe, and we feel we’ve put some real distance between ourselves and our competitor at this point,” said Moore.
“Since we shipped the game in October it’s been phenomenal from a business point of view as well as the way we positively impacted the broad world of video games and in particular the world of sports video games.
“We’ve had 50 international awards in the last four months since the game has been on the market. [It’s] the fastest-selling sports game we’ve ever had, at 1.7 million units here in Europe alone. And then from EA’s point of view, [it’s] the fastest-selling game of all time for EA in the European markets. So, a tremendous amount to be proud of.”
Pointing towards the future, Moore insisted EA wouldn’t be “complacent” following FIFA 10’s success.
“We’re growing not only organically, we’re not only taking that market share away from our competitor, but our goal is to grow the overall football business.”
