EA Sports FC 24 was 25% more popular than FIFA 23 at launch

There are still no hard sales figures, but it sounds like EA Sports FC 24 is off to a comfortable start even without the FIFA branding.

When it was announced that EA and FIFA were ending their partnership, and that EA’s FIFA games were being rebranded to EA Sports FC, there were naturally questions about how well it would sell.

EA believed it would be just fine without the FIFA branding, and so far its confidence appears to have been warranted.

Although UK physical sales are down compared to FIFA 23 (something EA expected to happen anyway), it’s said that 6.8 million people took part in EA Sports FC 24’s early access period – 25% more than FIFA 23’s early access period attracted.

As a reminder, you could only play EA Sports FC 24 in early access by either being an EA Play subscriber or by pre-ordering the Ultimate Edition, which costs £99.99 on PlayStation/Xbox consoles and £89.99 on PC.

EA shared this information with the Financial Times, although the publisher hasn’t said how many of those early access players purchased the Ultimate Edition.

Still, these results seem to demonstrate that EA doesn’t need the FIFA licence after all, and that a lot of long-time players were willing to stick with the publisher regardless (not that they really had much alternative in terms of realistic football games).

It must be especially vindicating considering the FIFA organisation apparently wanted to start charging EA over $1 billion to use the licence for the next four years.

While not the most appropriate metaphor, the ball is now in FIFA’s court, as the organisation intends to find a new partner to make officially licensed video games.

However, FIFA’s yet to reveal anything concrete and at the very least won’t have a new football game out until 2024 at the earliest, allowing EA to operate unopposed for the time being.

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