This year’s FIFA 23 will reportedly include cross-play, and that could mean big things for Madden NFL and other major sports games.
Yesterday on February 28, XFire (opens in new tab) reported that the unannounced FIFA 23 will include cross-play for all platforms. According to XFire’s sources, FIFA 23 will introduce cross-play for PC, PlayStation and Xbox platforms across every single in-game mode, so it won’t be a case of trialling the new feature before it’s properly rolled out.
If the new report is accurate, this will be the first time any EA-published sports game has attempted cross-play between any two systems. Currently, EA develops and publishes the Madden NFL and NHL games in addition to FIFA, all three of which see annual releases, as well as the EA Sports UFC series, which last saw a release back in 2020.
The new implementation of cross-play could have a knock-on effect for EA’s other sports franchises. It’s not unreasonable to expect EA to explore similar cross-play possibilities with their NFL and NHL franchises, should this experiment go down well with the FIFA crowd. FIFA 23 wouldn’t be the first major sports game to adopt cross-play – that honor belongs to Sony’s MLB series.
There’s been a fair bit of speculation that a name change could be coming for FIFA. Last year in October, EA registered a trademark for EA Sports FC, potentially signalling a move away from the FIFA licensing. This could just be the beginning of some fairly big shake ups for the soccer series.
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