Sales of games like this always amazed me. It seems like every year somebody tweaks a yaml config with the player details and hits build - voilà brand new game is out, time to shell out another $60.
From my experience with the NHL franchise. If you're a casual or light player of the game you probably won't notice a difference except for the time rosters.
But if you play the game on a regular basis you will also notice the new feature or the thing they've improved. If you play FIFA 2015 and then play FIFA 2022 you'll notice a massive difference yet people will have been saying for years that they don't change anything. That is because every year they improve a single aspect of the game.
The main revenue source for these games isn't even the actual game. It's the online experience where I've heard stories of people paying thousands for their online team.
> But if you play the game on a regular basis you will also notice the new feature or the thing they've improved. If you play FIFA 2015 and then play FIFA 2022 you'll notice a massive difference yet people will have been saying for years that they don't change anything. That is because every year they improve a single aspect of the game.
I think that's the point people are trying to make. If you're making a very small change,why are you charging people for the full price again? They could push an update for a small free each year. And resell the game for full price every 4 years.
Who said they make a very small change? I said they improve a single aspect. The aspects are normally massively changed.
And the point people are making is they can't spot the differnce and for them there is no difference. No there is, but they're not good enough to feel or see the difference. It's like saying there isn't a difference between each version release of a programming language. If you're a newbie programmer you won't notice the difference but if you're an advance user you notice it instantly and it changes how you do things.
One of the reasons I normally upgrade every year is that I found if I missed a year the number of changes that I would experience with basically overload me when I did upgrade.
I agree. It's a typical error of judgement from people that know things superficially. "All electronic music sounds the same", "all FIFA games are the same", "all soccer matches are the same". We simplify things that we know little about or things where we have poor proficiency. But experts can see the slightest differences and nuances.
Also from my experience with the NHL games, things change at a snails pace and not always for the better. It's been a few years since I've played one, but I remember the same buggy moves being possible for multiple years and then strange quality of life decreases in various seasons modes.
I quit when the gacha team stuff was starting. I'd hope the whales led to huge game improvements, but I wonder if they actually used that money to make huge changes would they just piss off their fanbase?
If the only value proposition of the game, as compared to competition, is to have real team and player names and their real up-to-date stats, then it's only fair to pay properly for that business advantage.
250M per year seems fair to me. If they don't want to, I'm sure there'll be another company willing to pay that amount for their game can be called “FIFA 2022”.
AFAIK, oil companies also has to pay for the right to extract oil from the ground to the owner. Why would this case be different.
and now EA is milking teenagers with builtin gambling mechanics. there's always a bigger fish and in this case I am happy to see that. Didn't FIFA also have an exclusive contract which prevented PES (Pro Evolution Soccer) from acquiring licenses for team names?
Buying exclusive rights to teams / leagues to cripple the competition is a fairly standard EA play. However it is important to note the exclusive contracts are between EA Sports and the teams / leagues, not FIFA.
The main things FIFA brings to the table for EA is the name, and the World Cup competition. EA clearly things they aren't worth as much as FIFA wants for them, hence the current wrangling.
If the deals falls through then "EA Sports FC" (or whatver it ends up being called) will still have all the teams / leagues locked up. So a theoretical FIFA game from someone else would presumably still have the same disadvantages as Pro Evo etc.
The FIFA license doesn't cover the the teams and/or player names. It only covers the words FIFA, the logo, an the "World Cup". The player names and likeness is covered by a separate license.
I am not sure player names and statistics are actually protected though. So it’s more 250m/year to get access to branding like team logos, FIFA on the box, etc.
No its 250m for FIFA and World Cup. All the leagues/teams come from individual contracts with each league and all the players from a contract with FIFPro (International Federation of Professional Footballers) which they just renewed. Basically FIFA wants a huge amount of money for the name FIFA on the box.
Football is not like NFL or NBA where you just make a single contract with the league and you get everything. Instead you have to go and make a lot of contracts all over the place. The system is just much more fragmented.
Basically EA could just not pay this money to FIFA and call the game EA Football or something and have all the same content except the FIFA name on the box and the world cup (and the national teams that come with it)
Putting FIFA on the box is clearly covered by trademark law.
I was questioning how much of protection does player statistics have. At least in the US factual information like who’s playing in which team isn’t protected by copyright or trademark.
It's not their stats that have protection, it's their likeness and names that require a license to use. Several games in the past have featured real rosters with fake names to get around this.
Likeness presumably, but fantasy football doesn’t run into a problem with player names. So while companies would get sued over names it seems like they would also likely win.
That said, graphics are at a point where player likeness is meaningful as is team jerseys. So customers would presumably prefer the licensed product.
Player names are trademarked the same way Louis Vuitton is trademarked as a brand.
For famous players, that may even mean they can introduce brand names that otherwise would be ruled confusing. You can’t start selling Louis Vuiton bags, but Messi clothing and shoes won a legal battle against the older Massi brand (https://www.bbc.com/news/business-54193973)
Trademark protects from confusion in the marketplace not all use. Pepsi can’t successfully sue CNN because someone being interviewed was drinking a soda.
That said, using the names would definitely get you sued but at 250m/year a court case could be worth it.
Players definitely trademark their names, but fantasy football leagues don’t have a problem using their real names.
So while I suspect having the correct number on an in game jersey might run into issues simply linking team names, player names, and player statistics is just factual information.
But the US is a really big market. Something can be a niche everywhere else and still make a ton of sales.
Madden has cumulative sales, according to Wikipedia, of 250 million copies. The FIFA series has cumulative sales of 325 million.
I'm having a hard time finding consistent annuals sales numbers. Random Googling suggests each new FIFA year sells around 24 million, and each new Madden year around 5 or 6 million.
But Wikipedia says Madden was at cumulative 100 million in 2013, which combined with them saying it is 250 million now, gives an average of over 18 million a year.
Maybe the numbers I found on annual sales were only counting sales of whatever was the latest version? In that case, if a significant number of people who buy Madden X do not do so until after Madden X+1 comes out that could explain it. Madden X could sell 6 million to the people who want the latest version, and then another 12 million in subsequent years to people who wait until it is a bargain bin game.
Sure it can generate tons of sale, but "best economics of any game franchise in existence."...
[1] contains some numbers, Madden is probably placed around number 30 if you look at only the numbers for video games.
I'd actually disagree here. Like, multiple mobile games make upwards of 1bn+ per year, and I'd strongly suspect that a bunch of the other sports franchises make similar amounts of money.
Yes, FIFA is probably the best known globally, but that doesn't mean that they make the most money.
I'm a somewhat frequent player. While yes player updates are a part of it there's is more. Firstly players and rosters usually gets updates throughout, so if I open my FIFA 21 now it would certainly update rosters.
In new titles usually we'll get some new leagues (nice for people who wants to play a team/league in their country).
IIRC in FIFA 22 you can create your own team now (waited for that one for a long time).
Worth noting that stuff that people want like a much better player career mode seems to never be updated.
Apparently they also did some very detailed motion capture on individual players.
Without access to the codebase of course I (or you/parent) don't know how much code they had to change of course but if the game is better I'll happily pay for it to enjoy it.
But if you play the game on a regular basis you will also notice the new feature or the thing they've improved. If you play FIFA 2015 and then play FIFA 2022 you'll notice a massive difference yet people will have been saying for years that they don't change anything. That is because every year they improve a single aspect of the game.
The main revenue source for these games isn't even the actual game. It's the online experience where I've heard stories of people paying thousands for their online team.