VentureBeat » FIFA Soccer 13

EA chief technology officer on PS4: ‘We no longer have to constrain our games’

Jeffrey Grubb — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 00:13:02 +0000

Electronic Arts is finally talking about the PlayStation 4 and the next-generation of home gaming systems. And the short version of chief technology officer Rajat Taneja’s conversation on a call with investors today? “OMG SO MANY RAM,” or at least that’s what it sounded like to my dimwitted brain.

“At EA we’ve never been more ready for the start of a new console cycle,” said Taneja. “The console itself is a giant leap for our industry. If you look at it on an aggregate basis, the new consoles are between eight and 10 times more powerful than the current generation. We no longer have to constrain our games or ration memory.”

Later in the call, EA chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen said that he’s seen Battlefield 4, and that it looks stunning. So we can expect a major visual overall from EA, but the Taneja is also excited about Sony’s new dedication to socializing traditional gaming with the “Share” button.

“The connected sharing capabilities of the new console fits directly with our strategy,” said Taneja. “It’s part of the trends of that we’ve been embracing of multiplayer gaming, connected gaming, and social gaming. This helps us accelerate those features in our games.”

For those that don’t know (and you can get fully caught up on the PlayStation 4 here), Sony’s new PS4 controller features a button called Share that players use to quickly broadcast livestreaming gameplay videos. Gamers can also use this feature to cut together a highlight reel based on recent in-game actions. The PS4 is always recording and saves up to the last 15 minutes of gameplay.

EA was already looking into similar features for its popular first-person shooter series Battlefield and soccer franchise FIFA, but Taneja says the publisher is happy to have such an elegant solution built into Sony’s new hardware.

Filed under: Games

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Call of Duty: Black Ops II beats Halo 4 in NPD’s dismal November game sales list

Dean Takahashi — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 23:30:52 +0000

Call of Duty: Black Ops II beat out Halo 4 for the top spot for U.S. retail game unit sales during the critical month of November, according to market researcher NPD.

But both blockbuster games were not able to lift overall game sales high enough to beat sales for November 2011. Sales for total video game hardware, software, and accessories sold at retail were $2.55 billion in November, down 11 percent from $2.87 billion a year ago.

The list does not include some of the fastest-growing parts of the game business, which includes used-game sales, mobile games, social games, and online titles such as free-to-play games. But the U.S. retail sales list is still useful in pointing out trends in gamer tastes, and it also keeps score on which companies are performing the best.

Game hardware sales were $838.9 million, down 13 percent from $962.2 million a year ago. Game software sales were $1.43 billion, down 11 percent from $1.60 billion a year ago. Game accessory sales were $280.9 million, down 8 percent from $305.3 million a year ago. If you count PC games, total software sales were $1.46 billion, down 11 percent from $1.65 billion a year ago.

It’s no surprise that Black Ops II beat out Halo 4, as Black Ops II is on more platforms.

The top 10 games of the month were:

Call of Duty: Black Ops II (360, PS3, Wii U, PC)** 1 Activision Blizzard
Halo 4 (360)** 2 Microsoft
Assassin’s Creed III (360, PS3, Wii U, PC)** 3 Ubisoft
Just Dance 4 (Wii, 360, Wii U, PS3) 4 Ubisoft
Madden NFL 13 (360, PS3, Wii, PSV, Wii U) 5 Electronic Arts
Skylander Giants (Wii, 360, PS3, 3DS, Wii U)** 6 Activision Blizzard
Need for Speed: Most Wanted 2012 (PS3, 360, PSV, PC) 7 Electronic Arts
NBA 2K13 (360, PS3, Wii, PSP, Wii U, PC)** 8 Take 2 Interactive
WWE 13 (360, PS3, Wii) 9 THQ
FIFA Soccer 13 (360, PS3, Wii, PSV, 3DS, Wii U, PSP) 10 Electronic Arts

**(includes CE, GOTY editions, bundles, etc., but not those bundled with hardware)

Here’s the analysis from Liam Callahan, analyst at NPD:

Overall

“These sales figures represent new physical retail sales of hardware, software and accessories, which account for roughly 50 percent of the total consumer spend on games. When you consider our preliminary estimate for other physical format sales in November such as used and rentals at $207 million, and our estimate for digital format sales including full game and add-on content downloads including microtransactions, subscriptions, mobile apps and the consumer spend on social network games at $410 million, we would estimate the total consumer spend in November to be over $3.1 billion. Our final assessment of the consumer spend in these areas outside of new physical retail sales will be reported in February in our Q4 Games Market Dynamics: U.S. report.”

“It’s important to compare this month’s results to November 2005, which was the last time the industry began to transition between console generations with the launch of a new platform. Comparing this month’s results to November 2005, retail video games sales are nearly twice as big as they were then (+97%). This really demonstrates the long-term health of retail sales even as many platforms are quite late in their lifecycles.”

“Despite an overall retail video game decline of 11 percent, November had the smallest year-over-year decrease we have seen for dollar and unit sales so far this year. This is a sign of momentum going into the December holiday period.”

Software

“At 14 percent, video game software unit declines are tied with August 2012 for the smallest year-over-year declines so far this year.”

“Overall entertainment software units decreased by 15 percent, however, when comparing the performance of the top 5 titles from this year to last, we see a rise in unit sales of 5 percent (games outside of the top 5 sold less, leading to overall declines).”

“While there was a 21 percent decline in the number of titles that launched this November versus November 2011, these new titles are holding their own and generating the same number of dollars per title on average. Unfortunately, declines this month stemmed from softer sales from catalog titles, which launched outside of this month, with dollar sales down 11 percent, collectively.”

“Half of the software dollars sold in November 2012 were for the Xbox 360, which gained 8 share points in overall software sales from last November.”

Hardware

“November 2012 was the lowest hardware decline for dollar sales we have seen in year-over-year trends so far this year.”

“The much anticipated launch of the new Wii U console brought in more dollars than the Wii launch in November 2006, up 21 percent from that launch month. With an average price 35 percent higher for the Wii U at launch compared to the Wii, this is an example of how consumers are willing to come out and spend when they see the value of the product.”

“Comparing Wii sales from November 2011 to Wii sales combined with Wii U sales in November 2012, dollar sales increased by 76 percent.”

“Xbox 360 led overall hardware platform sales for the sixteenth consecutive month.”

“Through bundling compelling third party content with the PS Vita hardware, November 2012 was the second highest month of sales on a unit basis for the PS Vita since launch.”

“The Nintendo DS was the only platform to increase in hardware unit sales versus November 2011.”

Accessories

“Skylanders accessories continue to perform well, building off the original game with the Skylanders Giants. Skylanders unit sales of both original and the new Giants were up over 250 percent compared to last November.”

Filed under: Games

This week in the Nintendo Download: Lego Lord of the Rings, Scribblenauts Unlimited, and New Super Mario Bros. 2

Sam Barsanti — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 18:30:34 +0000

Nintendo is once again out to prove that it is totally serious about supporting its various online platforms, as you can download new content this week for not just the 3DS and Wii U but the DSi and original Wii as well. Yep, it’s one of those “something for everyone” updates, which should hopefully help clear out the boring taste of last week’s Pac-Man port and YouTube app.

First up is the 3DS eShop, which is getting loads of new content today, including a demo of two-screen-platformer Fractured Soul, two more Coin Rush DLC packs for New Super Mario Bros. 2, a port of the NES’ Mighty Bomb Jack, and an adventure game called Murder on the Titanic. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I’m pretty sure the iceberg did it.

Also, Nintendo has apparently put on its rooster hat and written “full version of Scribblenauts Unlimited” into its magic notebook, as you can now download that and the full versions of Harvest Moon 3D: A New Beginning, Classic Games Overload: Card & Puzzle Edition, and Lego The Lord of the Rings on the 3DS eShop.

Finally, dubstep artist Skrillex brings the wub wub to the Nintendo Video section with a video for his song Breakn’ A Sweat, which also features The Doors. I can only assume that classic rock fans are very happy about that pairing.

Moving on to the Wii U, the system gets one of its first demos: FIFA Soccer 13. Adding more demos like this should bode well for the console going forward, especially since Nintendo shows no signs of decreasing the amount of full retail games it adds to the eShop. Speaking of, this week you can download Family Party: 30 Great Games Obstacle Arcade, Ben 10 Omniverse, Marvel Avengers: Battle for Earth, and Rise of the Guardians: The Video Game.

Wrapping things up with the DSi and the Wii, the former gets hidden object/minigame collection Christmas Wonderland 2 and role-playing game Crystal Adventure, while the latter finally gets a Virtual Console title that isn’t an old SNK brawler: the arcade classic BurgerTime. It’s still no Earthbound, but at least you get to kill pickle monsters.

Filed under: Games

Nintendo’s Scott Moffitt gives us the latest on the Wii U launch (interview)

Dean Takahashi — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 21:36:53 +0000

Nintendo wants the Wii U launch on Nov. 18 to be the video game event of the holiday season. Scott Moffitt, the company’s executive vice president of sales and marketing, is the man in charge of making that happen.

The Japanese giant has a lot at stake when it comes to the Wii U, which some have criticized as a not-quite-next-generation console that is about as powerful as Sony’s six-year-old PlayStation 3. Nintendo began advertising the system in earnest last week to convince gamers otherwise. We spoke with Moffitt about Nintendo’s approach, the ad campaign, and its timing.

Here’s a transcript of our interview.

GamesBeat: Tell us about what’s in motion right now. What’s happening as you lead up to the launch?

Scott Moffitt: We’re in the final countdown stage. We’re watching the imports every day, when the boats come in, to make sure we’re getting the product we’re anticipating. We started our marketing in earnest a few days ago. We’ve been building interactive kiosks in stores. We’ve got about 5,000 of those, so people can experience the system for themselves. That’s important for a complex product like this. We went live with advertising last week in social media and really in earnest over the weekend with some cinema. There’s a lot going on.

GamesBeat: The ad campaign seemed like it came late. What’s the thinking behind the timing of the ads?

Moffitt: The timing is almost to the day the same as we used for Wii. We weren’t trying to copy that plan exactly, but it just happened that way. We put a media plan together. We wanted to build awareness quickly, so it’s multi-touchpoint. There will be messages coming at people from every direction. We thought that Wreck-It Ralph was a good place to have some cinema. That’s where our advertising premiered over the weekend.

It’s not like a hardcore game where you need to release your advertising five weeks ahead of a game launch. For us, it’s fine to be closer to the launch. I think that makes more sense. The other factor, candidly, is that with an election campaign this year. There was less media available prior to when we bought, and it was much more expensive.

GamesBeat: Being virtually sold out added complexity to everything, right? If you convince more people to buy something this week, they’re not going to get it. They can’t even order it, right?

Moffitt: Right. Frustration can build up. That wasn’t really part of the plan either, though. We buy through an up-front process like a lot of big advertisers, so we committed to these media buys long before we knew that we were going to have a sold-out situation to pre-sales. We hoped we would be sold out, that pre-sales would be brisk. But we didn’t have the luxury of waiting to see that to know what our major plans would be.

GamesBeat: Have you guys made any projections on sales? I remember some analysts saying 4.5 million sales would be likely for the holidays.

Moffitt: What we’ve said is we’re capable of shipping 5.5 million units between Nov. 18 and March 31, the end of our fiscal year. That’s a global number. We’ve not broken it out by time period, so how much of that is week one, how much is holiday, we can’t say. Similarly, we’ve not disclosed how much of that will be in each region. The U.S. will clearly have the longest selling period, because we’re the first market to launch.

GamesBeat: If I tried to place an order, supposing some retailer had pre-sales still open, how long would it take at this point before I might get one? Is it well into the new year?

Moffitt: No, not at all. We’ve been through these processes before. We want product to be available on day one in stores throughout the country. If you line up or get there early, you should be able to get product on day one. GameStop has not sold all of their day one allocation. They’ve sold what they were making available for pre-sales. Those are two different numbers. Now, a lot of what we gave them, they’ve sold to pre-sales, but, like every retailer will, they’ve held some back so they have product on day one for consumers that come in the door.

We have said that we’ll have more Wii U units on store shelves in week one than we did for Wii in 2006. We’ll also have replenishment much more frequently during the holiday than we did for Wii. Having said that, though, we’re guessing there could be shortages. It won’t be there every day. Shipments coming in each week could sell very quickly.

Filed under: Games

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September NPD: Borderlands 2 nearly tops best-seller list as overall sales take another dive

Jeffrey Grubb — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 22:34:27 +0000

The NPD numbers are in, and despite the beginning of blockbuster season, it was another down month for the video game industry.

The NPD Group, a financial analysis firm, tracks retail sales for the gaming industry each month, which makes it easier to keep tabs on the financial health of the people making games and gaming hardware. September’s diagnosis? This generation is breaking down with old age.

Hardware, software, and accessory sales were all down in year-over-year comparisons, but before we break down the numbers, let’s take a look at the top 10 best-selling games for September 2012:

Madden NFL 13: EA (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PS Vita)
Borderlands 2: 2K Games (Xbox 360, PS3, PC)
FIFA Soccer 13: EA (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, 3DS, PSP)
New Super Mario Bros. 2: 295,000 — Nintendo (3DS)
Guild Wars 2: NCsoft (PC)
NHL 13: EA (Xbox 360, PS3)
World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria: Activision Blizzard (PC)
NCAA Football 13: EA (Xbox 360, PS3)
Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes: Warner Bros. Interactive (Wii, Xbox 360, PS3, DS, 3DS, PS Vita, PC)
Battlefield 3: EA (Xbox 360, PS3, PC)

Borderlands 2 nearly topped the list despite only having 11 days in retail compared to Madden’s full month. According to the NPD, Borderlands 2′s first-month sales outsold the original Borderlands, which launched in October 2009, by 234 percent.

Electronic Arts has four of its major licensed sports games all at or near the top of this list. EA published half of the 10 best-selling games in September. For years, we’ve grown accustomed to finding the most recent Call of Duty hanging around among the new releases, but EA’s Battlefield 3 seems to have stepped into that position.

“Madden NFL 13 launched on Tuesday, Aug. 28, and sold 11 percent more units in its debut month than the previous Madden last year,” Callahan said. “Not only was this an improvement over last year, but the launch of Madden NFL’13 represented the best month one performance at retail for a Madden title ever.”

One last note about this list, World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria couldn’t crack the top five, but the NPD Group does only track physical copies sold, and Blizzard sold the majority of this expansion through its digital channel.

The industry as a whole is down 24 percent from 2011, $1.11 billion in sales down to $848.3 million. New console sales took a 39 percent hit from $346.7 million down to $210.9 million. Hardware has reached a saturation point in which this current generation simply can’t do much more damage. Software and accessories were down 18 percent and 11 percent, respectively.

“Hardware sales are up on an average sales-per-week basis compared to August for the NDS, 3DS, PS3, Vita and 360, which points to momentum heading into the holiday season,” Callahan said. “In mid-September, Nintendo revealed launch details regarding the Wii U. The new console will launch on Nov. 18 and has the potential to reinvigorate retail sales of hardware.”

Nintendo, is phasing out the Wii console phasing out in favor of its upcoming Wii U in November, pointed toward an 89 percent increase in 3DS software sales compared to September 2011.

“Nintendo 3DS XL continues to galvanize our Nintendo 3DS business,” said Scott Moffitt, Nintendo of America’s executive vice president of sales and marketing. “Hardware sales are up, software sales are increasing exponentially, and the attach rate is growing stronger every month. With a great slate of upcoming games, including Paper Mario: Sticker Star, which arrives exactly one month from today, we like our position heading into the crucial holiday selling season.”

Nintendo also announced that Super Mario 64 DS became the third DS game to sell more than 5 million units in the U.S. It joins New Super Mario Bros. and Mario Kart DS which sold 10.6 million and 8.5 million, respectively.

Meanwhile, Microsoft released a statement saying the Xbox 360 sold 270,000 units in September, making it the best-selling “current-generation console” for 19 consecutive months. Consumer spending on Microsoft’s device remained high as well. The publisher bragged that total retail spending on its Xbox 360 platform surpassed $380 million, which is more than the PlayStation 3 and Wii combined.

Filed under: Games

FIFA Soccer 13 strives for perfection through gameplay imperfection (review)

Eduardo Moutinho — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 17:08:12 +0000

Update: Electronic Arts released a post-launch patch that added Brazil’s Vasco da Gama football club into FIFA Soccer 13. The review score will remain unchanged to reflect the original experience.

FIFA Soccer 13 is like a big football club’s yearly jersey refresh. EA Sports’ latest multiplatform ball-juggling juggernaut has some flashy original material, a few designs we haven’t seen before, and some unexpected accents.

The colors and crest, however, remain the same.

This year, as usual, EA’s treating us to the customary gameplay tweaks, updates to typical modes, and unique additions like PlayStation Move support.

So is FIFA 13 worth the investment, or should fans stay true to last year’s already broken-in release? Let’s hit the pitch and find out.

What you’ll like

First Touch Control is frustratingly authentic and appreciated
Soccer is a skill-based endeavor. Sometimes, a microscopic shift of the foot can cause a ball to ricochet in an undesired direction. FIFA 13 feeds off the chaos through its all-new First Touch Control mechanism, bringing another wild-card variable to the action.

Players now react differently to each pass they receive. Beautiful counterattacks flounder in the wake of a stumbling defensive midfielder with a subpar ball-control rating. Pinpoint triangulations between attackers near the goal are more uncertain. And even the most endorsement-bloated superstars find that cushy, round meal ticket occasionally escaping their nimble feet.

The new tweaks are random and infuriating, but they mimic the hair-pulling, unpredictable nature of real-life ball physics.

These touches hurt, but in a weirdly pleasant way.

Catalogue and Match Day join the EA Football Club
Last year, the EA Football Club made its first appearance. The socially driven mode gave players a chance to show their pride by linking their in-game accomplishments to groups associated with their favorite teams. This year, the mode returns in full footie force with new Catalogue and Match Day features.

Catalogue lets you redeem the experience points you earn from playing for soccer gear and career-mode boosts. These bonuses give you one more reason to rack up XP from weekly Football Club challenges and other pursuits. Match Day constantly refreshes rosters to reflect real-world results, making slight adjustments to team form and updating lineups when players get injured.

New skill games sharpen your simulated-soccer skills
While actual athletes might hate them, training drills make for some pretty compelling minigames. FIFA 13 is packed with addictive, orange cone-laden challenges that highlight gameplay basics like dribbling, passing, shooting, and even penalty kicks. The skill games should be particularly helpful for FIFA first timers who are still getting used to their digital boots. Series veterans should be pleased to know, however, that some of the drills provide just enough thumb-numbing difficulty.

And the developers had enough good sense to replace the boring man-against-goalkeeper loading screen pastime with these random bits of training. So you might actually get distracted into lobbing soccer balls at plastic buckets instead of pressing Start to get on with your exhibition match.

PlayStation Move support is surprisingly useful
When I discovered that FIFA 13 would feature PlayStation Move support, I couldn’t help but cringe at the gimmicky possibilities. Would I have to attach the PS3-mote to my shooting foot with some novelty strap? Or would I be able to access an all-new referee experience where I’d wave my Move controller around as I dished out yellow card after yellow card? Amazingly, PlayStation Move actually adds to the FIFA experience, especially when playing with a friend on the same team.

The Move lets you carefully map teammate runs during the course of play by moving an onscreen cursor, which is a real advantage. That means you can set up the perfect one-two pass-and-shoot scenario or exactly trace that ideal counterattacking sequence. Everything really comes together when playing in a cooperative setting. One person can control the ball while the other diagrams surgically precise paths across the field.

You could channel your inner John Madden, telestrating your way to victory. Wait. Wrong football. Never mind.

Filed under: Games
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Microsoft’s E3 2012: Analysis of 16,000+ comments shows Halo 4, South Park impressed, rest did not (graph)

Andrew Hiscock — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 18:27:18 +0000

Gamers are passionate people, and none more so than the members of one of the Internet’s most popular video game message boards, NeoGAF. The forums are often vilified, sometimes celebrated, but one cannot argue their dedication to the medium. Each year during the game industry’s largest trade show, the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), NeoGAF members congregate to comment in real-time on the press conferences hosted by first-party publishers Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo.

And they posted…a lot. During the four hours taken by the three conferences, NeoGAF members submitted 16,214 posts — the equivalent of two full novels. You’ll find no better source of information detailing how hardcore gamers felt. Now that E3 is over, one can take the time to mine this valuable data. After analyzing every single response to the three stage shows, we have a powerful set of conclusions.

What did they think of the Big Three’s announcements this year? Here, you can see the number of positive and negative responses to the Microsoft press conference as the news poured out:

Source: Andrew Hiscock

Click for a full-size version. For a more detailed explanation of how we analyzed this data, please see the explanation at the end of this article.

What NeoGAF liked about the Microsoft press conference

The press conference started strong with Halo 4. After this, the response was largely negative, with positive reactions occurring when Tomb Raider and Resident Evil appeared. (For more stories on any of these games or products, click on the tags below.)

NeoGAF also liked South Park: The Stick of Truth. The high point of the conference followed its trailer when South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone appeared on stage. This was largely due to Parker’s joke about modern consumer electronics, reflecting the frustrations of the NeoGAF community, which we’ll explore below.

What NeoGAF didn’t like

They disliked just about everything else. It is no surprise that a community of hardcore gamers didn’t enjoy anything that wasn’t a game, including Nike+, Xbox Music, and Internet Explorer. Interestingly enough, while responses remained largely negative, an upswing occurred when Microsoft introduced SmartGlass. Another drop to low scores followed.

Many games also received negative reactions, particularly titles for casual audiences or those that would use the Kinect sensor. These included FIFA 13, Madden 13, Wreckateer, and Dance Central 3.

Two games for the hardcore audience also received largely negative reactions: Splinter Cell: Blacklist and Call of Duty: Black Ops II. In the case of the former, members cited a departure from stealth gameplay and the Middle Eastern environment as reasons for displeasure. In the case of the latter, many cited that it wasn’t enough of a departure from previous games in the Call of Duty franchise and that its developer had already announced and presented the game to journalists at an earlier event.

NeoGAF also strongly disliked long demos. This pattern presented itself in the reactions that became steadily more negative the longer a game stayed on stage. You can easily see this in the cases of Splinter Cell: Black List, Tomb Raider, and Resident Evil 6.

What wasn’t recorded

Unfortunately, due to NeoGAF’s popularity during press conferences, its servers went down for an extended period. During this time, data was unavailable for Fable: The Journey, Gears of War: Judgment, Forza Horizon, and for a significant part of non-game services.

Two other down periods occurred; although, they were much shorter, which resulted in some posts. These happened during the South Park: The Stick of Truth trailer and Usher’s live performance.

For more on how NeoGAF reacted to the E3 press conferences, check out the Sony and Nintendo studies.

How the scoring works

NeoGAF hosts a single message board thread for each press conference, where dozens of members comment throughout each show. I graded each comment as positive or negative, giving them scores of 1 or -1 respectively. Then I totaled the sum of these reactions for each discrete minute and plotted in the above chart. A high score means that the NeoGAF community liked what they saw; a score close to zero represents mixed reactions; and a low score means that they were not enjoying the show at that moment.

Some notes on how I scored each response:

I made no distinction between really positive or somewhat positive comments — likewise for negative comments. Each was given either a score of 1 or -1.
While I made every effort to understand the various memes and inside jokes that make up a large part of the responses, if I could not understand a response, I would not score it.
In the event that a comment employed obvious sarcasm, I scored it to reflect the original intent of the commentator. If the sarcasm was not clear, I relied on the literal meaning of the comment. Fortunately, the very expressive NeoGAF community rarely employed subtle sarcasm.
When comments included positive and negative observations, I accounted for the more immediate reaction to preserve a more real-time response. An example: “I liked the game that was shown at the beginning of the show, but this game now is bad” would have a negative score.
Many comments weren’t scored as they offered no opinion. These included clarifications, questions, discussions between members unrelated to the press conference, and inquiries into whether one game or another would be shown at a later time.

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Filed under: Games

FIFA 13 makes key adjustments for a more-realistic soccer game

Alejandro Quan-Madrid — Wed, 30 May 2012 13:00:32 +0000

For developer EA Canada, tweaking FIFA Soccer 13 to be more like the actual sport is not so much about graphics this time around. Its focus is instead on gameplay improvements. The company is busy translating some of the subtle yet important ways that real-life athletes perform on the field into its latest franchise installment. While people who aren’t into the sport might see these changes as minutiae, soccer fans will likely welcome them like a game-winning penalty kick.

Keeping soccer fans engaged is important to the future of Electronic Arts, since FIFA represents a huge chunk of the company’s annual revenue. Tweaks like this one are important to get fans to get off the couch and buy a new game every year.

In FIFA 13, computer-controlled players are all a bit smarter. EA Canada says the footballers are able to read the developing plays and make adjustments in anticipation instead of just reacting to the ball. Teammates will also do a little stutter step to avoid ending up in an offside position when receiving a pass. It’s nice to know that the federation is making sure that all the digital athletes are up to date on the rules of the game.

As far as ball handling goes, the developer modeled the players’ footwork after Argentine football superstar Lionel Messi. FIFA 13 athletes in control of the ball can now dribble in a different direction than they are facing. This tactic can be effective for shielding the ball from opponents and making one-on-one matchups more unpredictable.

In an effort to make FIFA 13 follow the rules of physics more closely, EA Canada is scaling back the “perfect touch” phenomenon from previous installments. Players are now less likely to essentially catch falling balls with their feet with ease. Now, similar to what happens in the real world, high-flying passes can bounce off of the receivers, creating more turnover opportunities.

Defenders can also mess with the offense by using the tackle button to push, pull, and bully opponents. EA Canada is making this new level of aggressive play possible by building on its special physics engine…and by presumably using lenient referees.

Finally, FIFA 13 will feature an improved free-kick mode where the offense can use up to three players who can psych out the defenders by making fake runs at the ball to attack. The other team can, in response, add and remove players from the wall and have them scoot around a bit to try to block the kick.

If you take all of these changes into account, EA Canada is obviously aiming to give its core fans a more nuanced and realistic sports simulation with FIFA Soccer 13. After all, that’s the primary audience that will appreciate these gameplay tweaks. We’ll see if this installment can score when publisher Electronic Arts releases it in September 2012.

Filed under: Games