FIFA needs to copy Warzone and make Ultimate team free to play Activision\/EAFIFA\u2019s Ultimate Team mode is lucrative enough to stand its own \u2013 but will EA take cues from Warzone and make that happen? FIFA 22 is out now, and as our review notes, it\u2019s one of the franchise\u2019s strongest entries in years. More realistic animation, vastly improved player career, and the improved visuals we come to expect each year mean this year\u2019s FIFA is a must-buy for fans. EA should be celebrating the launch, but instead appears to have been drawn into more debates about the popular Ultimate Team mode. Is it promoting gambling? Is it encouraging players to spend money on loot boxes? For more on that discussion, I\u2019d refer you to Eurogamer\u2019s excellent interview with EA executive Chris Bruzzo. For now, though, I think there\u2019s a surprising source of inspiration EA could lean on for FIFA Ultimate Team\u2019s future \u2013 Call of Duty Warzone. An unlikely source of inspiration Not long ago, the only way to experience Call of Duty\u2019s fast-paced shooting, either alone or with friends, was through a new $60 release each year. For that price, you got a campaign (most years), multiplayer, and usually either Zombies or another co-operative mode. In early 2020, though, Warzone was released \u2013 a completely free-to-play battle royale that took those signature mechanics and made them available for all players at no cost. If you happened to already own that year\u2019s title, Modern Warfare, you\u2019d be able to drop your loadouts into Warzone, but for everyone else, Warzone marked a great jumping-in point. The result? Over 100 million players in just over a year. It\u2019s not just that it was free, of course, and Warzone did offer some interesting wrinkles to the aging battle royale formula, but its impact was evident. While Ultimate Team continues to bring in the cash ($1.62 billion in the last fiscal year alone), it\u2019s clear that fans are starting to feel a little like the mode is in need of a shakeup. Could FIFA Ultimate Team be its own product? FIFA Ultimate Team should be free-to-play Imagine if EA SPORTS released FIFA Ultimate Team as an ever-evolving product, where players could jump in for free, and invest if they wanted to \u2013 just like Warzone. I\u2019d wager you\u2019d feel less hard done by shelling out for a pack or two if you hadn\u2019t dropped a minimum of $60 on the game to begin with. Sure, you\u2019d need a mechanic to \u201crecycle\u201d cards for new variants as players move teams in real life, but you could convert FIFA\u2019s current seasonal model into a paid battle pass for free customers, too. The introduction of HyperMotion in this year\u2019s game also signifies a sizeable engine upgrade, meaning that, in theory, the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S versions won\u2019t need to be retooled for a while \u2013 a perfect opportunity for players to jump in. Rumors had circulated in the past that EA is considering a move to free-to-play, and while PES, sorry, eFootball 2022 has had a horrendously botched launch, I don\u2019t think that should put EA SPORTS off of the idea. Not only would the company introduce plenty more to the FIFA franchise, but there\u2019s an argument that the division of resources could allow for more content in an actual boxed FIFA product \u2013 maybe the online career mode that\u2019s been mooted for years, or a long-due overhaul of Pro Clubs. Hell, if Ultimate Team goes free-to-play, it\u2019d surely add crossplay, finally. There\u2019s no guarantee that\u2019ll happen, of course, but as someone that\u2019s spent more time in free-to-play games in the last year or two than I could possibly count, I think there\u2019s the potential for a big shakeup \u2013 and after the clear success of Apex Legends, I\u2019m pretty sure it\u2019s already on EA\u2019s mind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
FIFA needs to copy Warzone and make Ultimate team free to play Activision\/EAFIFA\u2019s Ultimate Team mode is lucrative enough to stand its own \u2013 but will EA take cues from Warzone and make that happen? FIFA 22 is out now, and as our review notes, it\u2019s one of the franchise\u2019s strongest entries in years. More […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68749\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}