I’ll level with you: I have never once bought a FIFA or EA Sports FC game for the gameplay innovations.
As much as I’d like to claim that refinements to corner kicks and dribbling mechanics were the reason for my owning every EA football sim since FIFA 13, that simply isn’t true.
I’m almost ashamed to admit it, but I kept buying FIFA titles – and continue to buy EA FC titles – simply because I want to play with up-to-date players, in up-to-date kits, at up-to-date clubs. I bought FIFA 14 to play as Gareth Bale for Real Madrid. I bought FIFA 18 to see Neymar in a PSG shirt. I will probably buy FC 26 because the in-game Cole Palmer looks more like the real-life Cole Palmer than his FC 25 likeness ever did.
I know this sounds ridiculous – and it is. But I’m willing to bet that most people who routinely invest in a similar-feeling football sim each year think the same way. Minor graphical improvements and up-to-date licensing agreements are what keep EA’s marquee sports franchise feeling fresh (or at the very least, different), not the tweaks to the way its games are actually played.
To be clear: I do think the recent gameplay updates to EA FC have been very good, and I’m not sure what more I could want from a football game in terms of mechanics. In my FC 25 review, I wrote that “the overall experience is so good that it’s hard to chastise EA for making small improvements to an already excellent foundation.” And from what I’ve played of FC 26 so far, the same will be true of this year’s edition.
The biggest upgrade in FC 26 is a dedicated new gameplay preset (‘Authentic’) for those who value realism over arcade-style fun, and it’s a change I welcome. But the sad truth is that, even if FC 26 didn’t ship with new gameplay changes, the allure of new kits, updated transfers, and marginally improved player faces would probably be enough to reel me back in.
Sports games are a unique business proposition in this way. The seasonal nature of sports means that video games based on those sports can be seasonal, too. Developers like EA and 2K don’t need to invent new stories or characters to sell new games, because those stories and characters are being created in reality. If the sports change, so too do the games.
As a Chelsea fan, I want to play with my club’s current best player, Cole Palmer, but as recently as FC 23, he was a low-rated player belonging to an entirely different team. Now, Palmer is front and center of EA’s marketing campaign for FC 26, he’s one of the best players in the game, and his in-game likeness has been treated to a graphical makeover. That alone makes me want to play FC 26 – not because FC 26 is a dramatically different game to FC 25.
Developers like EA and 2K don’t need to invent new stories or characters to sell new games, because those stories and characters are being created in reality.
There is a way around this conundrum: EA could release a live service football game that’s updated with new players, new licensing, and new modes every season. But the reason why such a game does not exist is painfully obvious.
FC 25 was by some margin the best-selling video game of 2024 in the UK, and the eighth best-selling video game of 2024 in the US. It was an almost identical story for FC 24 in 2023, FIFA 23 in 2022, FIFA 22 in 2021, and so on. If a video games company is already selling 10 million copies of a near-identical title every year, it’d be financial madness to pull the plug on that business model.
So, as much as we, the players, might complain that EA’s football franchise doesn’t innovate as much as other video game series, it’s also on us as players to bring about that innovation. Maybe one day we’ll see a live service EA FC game that goes a little easier on our wallets, but until then, Cole Palmer’s new hair physics will have to do.
