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The Wii U version of FIFA 13 lacks some of the biggest features introduced in this year’s Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions, including FIFA’s new First Touch System.
But will next year’s Wii U version achieve parity with the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of FIFA 14?
“Possibly,” says FIFA 13 Wii U producer Matt Prior. “We’ll see how Wii U goes and all the rest of it. But yes, certainly that would be the hope at this stage but who knows what’s going to happen in the future.”
Prior describes the Wii U version of FIFA 13 as being “somewhere inbetween” the 360/PS3’s FIFA 12 and FIFA 13, attributing the missing features to a “technical first-iteration issue”.
“When you’re building anything… you need a solid foundation on which to build. You can’t build on a foundation which is continually changing. We’re running alongside FIFA 13 [on 360/PS3], so those brand new features like the additions to the physics engine and so forth, they’re being worked on, so we can’t bring that over, they change it, and we bring it over again. It’s just not technically feasible.
“We’ve got a lot of the big ticket items that they have like the physics engine, precision dribbling and tactical defending, we just don’t have some of the later implementations in FIFA 13. The first touch control that they have, we weren’t able to bring that in because that was in development, but there is a lot in there. And then on top of that we’ve got all the Wii U specific features so it counter-balances it. They don’t have Manager Mode or co-op mode so it balances itself out.”
Will FIFA on Wii U always be playing catch up with the 360/PS3 versions, though? And what will happen to the Wii U version when the core FIFA team finally moves onto next-gen consoles?
“I don’t have any details of any kind of future consoles so can’t comment how Wii U would relate to [those],” Prior continues. “But in terms of parity with PS3 and 360, it’s the first year that’s always the most difficult one. Whereas on Xbox, they’re starting afresh from FIFA 12 and just building on top of it, we’re starting with nothing. Part of our challenge is that we have to build that foundation.
“It’s like an 80/20 split in terms of effort. 80 per cent of our time is just building the game and getting it working on [Wii U] and then 20 per cent is new features and so on. But that’s just a first year iteration issue, so now we have this, moving forward in terms of parity with 360 and PS3 is much easier to get there.”
The Wii and PlayStation Vita versions of FIFA 13 were criticised for being near-identical to last year’s versions. The two versions allegedly only contained minor updates over the previous year’s games.
Perhaps more concerning, though, is the fact that FIFA 13 on Vita is still missing FIFA’s tactical defending, a feature first introduced in the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of FIFA 12.
