FIFA 23 To Reportedly Feature Cross-Play Between PlayStation, Xbox, PC
EA’s next instalment in its massively popular football sim, FIFA 23, will reportedly feature cross-play, allowing players on PlayStation, Xbox and PC to play with each other.
According to games insider Tom Henderson, the feature will be available across all of the modes included in the game. If true, this will be the first time in the franchise’s almost 30-year history that players from different platforms can take the field together.
Henderson further said that this year’s entry in the annual franchise will feature both the men's and women's World Cups. EA is said to have expanded its licensing partnerships across all the major professional football leagues to bring fresh faces into the game.
EA is also expected to improve the Hypermotion Technology introduced in last year’s entry to enhance in-game players’ animations and make them as close to what’s seen in actual matches as possible.
Hypermotion Technology is exclusive to the next-gen release of FIFA 22. The technology was used to capture footballers’ movements and behaviours in real life and then brought that data to the game to make animations look and feel more realistic. The change this time around, however, is that EA has found a way to capture data without needing footballers to wear motion tracking suits. This allowed the development team to capture over 100 times more data in a single league season than ever before.
While these changes will be exciting for fans of the game, many are perhaps still wondering what the future holds for the franchise as a whole, after news surfaced in October of last year that FIFA has ended licensing contract with EA Sports. Negotiations between the two reportedly stopped after the football association demanded the game publisher pay US$1 billion in licensing fees every four years, which is almost double the current US$150 million per year rate.
As of writing, it’s not yet known whether FIFA 23 will be the last game to feature the FIFA license. EA is already preparing to transition in case contract negotiations don’t pan out, having already filed trademarks for “EA Sports F.C.”, which will likely be the name it’ll use for its future football games.
Going by previous years, FIFA 23 will likely release sometime between September to October 2022.
FIFA 23, for the first time in the franchise's long history, will reportedly feature cross-play, allowing players on PlayStation, Xbox and PC to take the field together.
This year's instalment is also expected to feature both the men's and women's World Cups as well as improvements to last year's Hypermotion Technology.
However, there's still no word on whether or not EA will continue to carry the FIFA license in future games after it was earlier reported that licensing contract negotiations stopped.