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FIFA Free To Play In 5-10 Years?

Yes, that is a bit of a drastic headline, but that’s the way Peter Moore sees things going.

In an interview with Kotaku, Moore has laid out his predictions for the future.

“Ultimately, my goal is, I measure our business in millions of people have bought our game”, Moore continues, “Maybe when I’m retired, as this industry progresses, hundreds of millions are playing the games. Zero bought it. Hundreds of millions are playing. We’re getting 5 cents, 6 cents ARPU (average revenue per user) a day out of these people.”

“I think there’s an inevitability that happens five years from now, 10 years from now, that, let’s call it the client, to use the term, [is free.]“

So how would that affect FIFA? Imagine a situation where the core of the game was a download that you then customized with the leagues and teams that you want. Could the EASFC Catalogue be the start of a migration towards that kind of system? For now we’ll be spending XP, but it’s not hard to see real world currency being brought in at some point, especially for people who want items but don’t have the right level/XP. Battlefield has been doing paid shortcuts for a while now.

It would then be possible to ditch the yearly release cycle too. At the start of the season a new kit pack could be brought out for teams and/or leagues, if you’re happy to stick with the old kits then you don’t need to upgrade and Roster updates are already rolled out as and when needed. Stadiums, sound packs, commentary packs and dare I say it, boot packs could all be bundled on a market place to allow people to properly customize the FIFA experience they want. Last year was the first time we really saw micro-transactions in FIFA (aside from FUT, but they aren’t really necessary) with the Creation Centre add-ons, It would definitely be interesting to see how those did.

Losing the yearly cycle could have many positive impacts. Gameplay changes could be rolled out on a “when they’re ready” basis and making smaller, more frequent updates to the game should also allow a more positive approach to bug fixes as there would be more opportunities to get them into the game. With developers under less pressure to hit strict deadlines for each yearly release we could expect to see an improvement in the quality of features when they’re first released rather than the “it’s not quite finished but the disks need printing” situation we sometimes see now. Could Career Mode, FUT and Online play become separate add-ons that you pay for access to and if they did, how would it affect the development of those features? The biggest question of course is how would this change things for people who don’t have their console online? Would FIFA be dead for them?

Lot’s of questions raised, definitely something we’ll need to cover on a podcast, Feel free to add to them in the comments.

Join the discussion
  • Toby Ross

    Did anyone else gulp?

    There are so few examples of freemium games being developed in a way which works for the gamer as well as the developer. FUT for example is effectively a pay-for-success model – if that was applied to any other mode those too would be dead in my eyes.

  • David Humber

    Sounds good to me, Apart from Football games i very rarely play a game for longer than 3 months and even then it has to be a really good game like Ghost Recon or Gt/Forza.

  • walker

    Now this is more like it, get rid of the yearly cycles. Just upgrade the quality of the gameplay, rosters, kits, stadiums etc from a download and the manual could be put online so people understand the instructions. No more wasting materials to be thrown in landfill.

    Also, why not give communities the option/tools to edit stadiums, kits, stats, nets and even gameplay a bit like what PES does. Obviously when it comes to online gameplay there would need to be a standard game so the stats can’t be changed to give your opponent an unfair advantage.

    Why is it I have to work 13/14 hours a day when there are 25 million people unemployed around europe? I’m sick of this F****** system. I’m sure most of those 25 million people are not lazy and are willing to contribute, so how about job sharing so I and other people can have work life balance.

  • walker

    @Toby Ross

    As you say regarding FUT the pay for success model, won’t interest me and I would find it boring.

    If you want to keep users/customers then the competition has to be fair, if people feel cheated they will stop playing or they will play offline.

    If people are unhappy with the product, they have a choice, they can stop buying/using it.

    It all depends on how it’s done, but I’m all for it.

  • Mike Astuto

    @Toby Ross It raises many questions for me, but I think it can be done, and done well if they use the right attitude and strategy. I think ultimately the price just has to be right… I play almost only CM and online H2H. If I could customize FIFA at a cost that is lower that the current $60 package for a whole bunch of game modes I don’t use I think i’d be pretty happy with that.

  • Curwen43

    Sounds good to me.
    Just like the euro 2012 expansion.
    Buy it if you want it

  • Mike Astuto

    @Toby Ross and I think the difference for FUT is that you’re paying more money solely for the purpose of getting better players. I don’t think we would find the same kind of pay-for-success-model in other online game modes. At least id hope not. I think EA have done a reasonably good job of always trying to introduce a pretty balanced game and I can’t see too many places in other games modes where dropping a wad of cash would give you a significant advantage on your competition. Maybe Im overlooking things and misreading the article but it seems like EA would have to go out of their way to do something like that.

  • kenneth

    it will kill the fifa industry.. so stupid.. whats wrong with this man!?

  • David Humber

    Kenneth read the full article rather than the headline/part of the article on here…

    http://kotaku.com/5919847/the-strange-scary-fascinating-exciting-future-of-video-games-according-to-a-giant

  • Admiral Stinkpants

    This guy is batshit insane.

  • jon

    Oh god.

    I would drop FIFA in a heartbeat, if this is comes to life.

  • ahmed

    the question to me is , how much would it cost ?

    I, for example, don’t use FUT … I’ve never used it ..
    so does this mean that I would have to pay ‘less’ than what a usual game would cost ?

    if so, then it’s a great idea !

  • Fan

    Nothing is ever free.

    If EA adopted this model expect to get one stadium, one set of boots for your pro, one arena and 5 hair cuts.

    EVERYTHING else would be an extra $/£1 each.

  • lelly

    What about licenses, would we have to buy licenses for the leagues an so gamemodes and so on, if we had to do that and the deal with the leagues run out do we then lose licenses we payed for or do we get to keep that years licenses?
    Example
    Just say we got the license for the german league till the end of this season that has just passed, pay for them or not, would they suddenly just go unlincensed or would they be we still be playing with the german old license because im sure we would be paying for new licenses and so on, look how poor a job they did with the EUROS DLC and look how much they charge for that.

  • walker

    @lelly

    It all depends on how it’s done. If the dlc is shoddy you don’t have to buy it, I didn’t bother with the Euro dlc knowing it was crap. It is down to people not buy things if they think it is of poor quality. They can’t keep releasing fifa or other games over and over again with little changes, it is stupid.

    When you consider you can get thousands of free books for the Kindle and there are things such as Project Gutenberg, I wonder how authors are going to make living in the future. Lots of jobs are being automated, I know my job will be automated in this or the next decade. The financial system is over, it’s only a matter of time before the whole thing comes crashing down, and it will be hell.

  • David

    Sounds pretty good to me. As long as I don’t have to pay more for what I already pay for the full game eg; I can get all the leagues and game modes that come in the usual FIFA disc without costing me more money. Would be nice to be able to customize your entire FIFA with the desired leagues and game modes of your choice whilst being able to save money since you would only pay for what you want in your game.

  • lelly

    @walker

    I know what you are saying but if EA was to work hard on the game and its DLC than this would work well with everyone but my feeling is EA will abuse its fan base and provide shoddy DLC, others will work hard an try to keep their fans happy where EA will only look to fill their wallets, what a cold world we can live in. EA have probably thought of this as a way of making more money so if we was to buy all the licenses im guessing it will cost more than it normally will, i hope not.

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