Tired of EA Sports FC already?
If you answered yes to the above question, this is the newsletter for you. If you didn’t say yes, don’t leave yet! You may still end up finding some sort of appeal, especially if you’re a veteran football video gamer.
The beautiful game has been dominating the video game market ever since the release of the first-ever FIFA game way back in 1993. Whether you’d want to believe it or not, football simulation has continuously improved over the course of its lifetime, and flash forward to today, we are fortunate to have a number of different titles available at our disposal.
If you play football in real life and you’re a millennial or younger, chances are you’ve touched a football video game at least once in your life, whether it was on a console or on your mobile device.
If you’ve gone your entire lifetime as a football fan without having touched FIFA, PES, Football Manager or any other football video game, consider yourself part of a very exclusive group of people.
Regardless of where, when and how you’ve decided to experience football simulation, the point is that fever for the beautiful game runs deep in our veins. Video games have become yet another vessel of football enjoyment, even when we’re on the verge of breaking our controllers during Weekend League.
It was the end of a truly nostalgic era when EA Sports put an end to their 20-year partnership with FIFA to include the organization’s name and license in their football video games. In the long run, it probably won’t mean much, though, and we won’t be surprised to hear the word FIFA still being used to describe EA Sports FC years into the future.
Just get ready to start hearing UFL, too.
The upcoming football video game is set to be released near the end of 2023 and may as well end up piling some pressure on EA Sports if it turns out to be successful.
The latest edition of Football Manager is also set to release next month, and it’s looking better than ever before.
In this 26th edition of the Plei newsletter, I break down everything there is to know about both upcoming football titles, and I also provide my own personal commentary on the video games and their possible impact on EA Sports FC and eFootball. 👇
UFL has everything to rise to the top of the football video game food chain, and we’ll explain why.
First of all, the game, developed by Strikerz Inc., will be fully free-to-play, similar to eFootball. But the true appeal to this title is actually the fact that there will be no methods of “pay-to-win” across their various game modes.
If you’ve ever played Ultimate Team, you know that, as long as you splash a couple hundred dollars on FIFA Points, you can open as many packs as you’d like and build yourself quite a formidable squad from the very first day of release.
On the other hand, if you don’t spend any money on the game, you’re most likely going to be at it for months, grinding nonstop just to acquire the same players that someone already had on release day, all because they did microtransactions and you didn’t.
The majority of the promo and hype surrounding UFL is exactly the opposite of the above scenario. The video game is set to have its own version of Ultimate Team, and there will be no elements of pay-to-win.
The game’s flagship motto is actually “Fair to play”, a play on the fact that the game is free to play and also offers an even playing ground for all.
Pure skill, technique and goals will determine the result of games in UFL, with a heavy emphasis on natural progression.
The game modes that will be available to play are:
Flagship Mode (their Ultimate Team) is apparently going to carry over every year, so you won’t have to restart and make a new squad after every annual update.
If there’s anything to be remotely concerned about when it comes to UFL, it’s that it was announced way back in August 2021, and since then, it has been delayed a number of times.
But the wait is very soon to be over.
UFL is set to be released in these final months of 2023, and we couldn’t be more excited.
An entirely different take on football video games, Football Manager isn’t something that appeals to everyone.
For those that don’t know, FM is purely a simulation game, meaning you don’t control the players on the field. Think of Manager Career Mode in EA Sports FC, but way, way, way more sophisticated.
If you’re a longtime fan of the FM series, which has been around since they released their first game in 2004, you’re in for quite the treat. The 20th and latest title in the series has been marketed as their most complete edition ever.
FM 24 is promising plenty of new details and deeper immersion than ever before, including upgrades to dynamics, training, match engine, online play, set pieces and board requests.
We’d be here forever if we decided to break down everything that’s to come in the newest Football Manager installment, so refer to this blog on their website for a deeper dive into all the new features.
Football Manager 2024 is set to be released on November 6 and will be available on PC, PS5, Xbox, and later on, Nintendo Switch and Mobile.
