FIFA 21: King of football has two problems
The year 2020 will be remembered for many things, most of them negative, but in the world of game consoles and video games it will go down in history as the year in which a leap in quality was made. Not too high, but high enough to bring new things to an increasingly young, more demanding and volatile consumer. The new machines from Microsoft and Sony are putting game makers to the test.
FIFA 21 could improve on FIFA 20, but no one expects these games to improve from one season to the next. Rather, they wash their faces and change the cover photo to Cristiano Ronaldo for Messi. This has been the case for more than five years. Although in some countries the photo of the footballer changes to attract local consumers, those two players have been everything to this game.
The arrival of e-sports is a global event that has changed the paradigm of sport. A FIFA online player is treated like a professional gamer and earns a lot of money. So much so, that many European football teams already have an e-sport division just as they do basketball or women's football. FIFA is the king of the online game, specifically in its Xbox version, although the sales leader is the PlayStation version. "I sell one FIFA 21 for Xbox for every 10 for PS," said a salesman at the Game shop on Friday when the game went on sale.
EA is the Californian company that distributes FIFA through its Canadian-based division EA Sport. It is their flagship game and the one that earns them a large share of the more than $3 billion in net profit so far in 2020. It has been handling world football in its digital version since 1993. It improved every year with the licensing of new leagues that dazzled players from countries from Brazil to Japan because they saw their teams, their stadiums, their jerseys, their players... everything as real as technology allows.
In 2019 they touched on glory with the official licensing of the competitions organised by UEFA, the Champions and the Europa League. The environment surrounding these matches is the same as that seen on television. The problem is that they lost Cristiano Ronaldo's Juventus. And that is a major problem because Piedmont Calcio is not Juventus. This is the first time that something like this has happened since Ronaldo's famous license for his contract with Nike in the 90s caused his default name to be N9 in some football games at Inter Milan.
At FIFA 21 leaks remain. Roma is not in the game either, but it has exclusive rights to Inter Milan and Milan. Konami is responsible for this situation. The Japanese company has been in the shadow of EA Sports for years with Pro Evolution Soccer (PES). The two games reached their peak in 2008 with almost nine million copies each, but FIFA was starting to have more licenses and to be more entertaining to play. In 2015, the gap was at its widest with 15 million copies for FIFA and just 1.5 million for PES. Even so, Konami knew that his game had followers all over the world. Tired FIFA players who were looking for another A.I. to test them. They needed a new strategy.
Teams like Barça, Bayern, Juventus, Arsenal, Manchester United, Schalke 04, Roma and Celtic are licensed and collaborate with PES, although they also remain in FIFA because their leagues have sold the rights to EA. The French and Italian leagues in all their divisions are already owned by the Japanese and it is a matter of time (or money) before they disappear from FIFA and break the bank. The battle is going to be a long one if Konami decides to get into e-sport and start bidding for PES to be the official game.
For now, FIFA 21 is adapted to the restless players who want to take a FIFA and want it now. Faster in development and with the glorious Frostbite game system that allows almost total realism. The new Xbox Series X and the PS5 will help this realism. Its online mode still has few options, but the Spanish will be happy when they find out that they finally have servers in Madrid to prevent it from slowing down, stopping and ending up making many people desperate. VOLTA mode is a cheap copy of that FIFA 98 where they played indoor football on a glass-walled pitch. It's not much good, but it entertains. Its career mode is very good, although there are too many factors beyond the player's reach that end up making it too unrealistic. Playing a Champions League with Real Madrid or a Libertadores with River Plate is quite an experience. The stadiums, the stands and the staging have an extraordinary realism, even if you don't know how to play.
Incomprehensible errors in the free-kicks or penalties follow. Complex models that make it impossible to score a free kick or take a decent penalty with a mid-level player. There are players capable of doing this in the online mode, but they have to spend hours learning the method. Training is not achieved because they have worked on the technical skill games that are very enjoyable, but do not help with the basics.
Ultimate Team is the hot potato of the FIFA 21 and all the previous ones since 2015. EA Sports included a perfect Trojan horse to keep earning money on top of the 70 euros average cost of the game. In the style of the sticker packs, the user wins envelopes with unknown players to play matches without polish. If you want envelopes with superior players and skills you have to pay money and that opens a dangerous door to gambling in the video game version. Belgium has already banned this system because these envelopes are random and are considered to be in breach of the rules of its Gaming Commission. In 2020 EA revealed that its profits for Ultimate Team were 1.5 billion dollars. What they couldn't count is how many people have given every last euro on their payroll to this cause for buying envelopes that also contain old glories like Beckham, Figo, Ronaldo or Di Stéfano.
FIFA 21 does not improve on FIFA 20, but it is still the football game par excellence. The micro transaction model is a danger to the user and laws will eventually limit its use. If not devoured by Konami and its European expansion.
