EA Sports FC 24 may be the future for the US game publishers when it comes to football, but has rebranding from "FIFA" proven costly?
EA Sports and the FIFA organization failed to come to terms on a new licensing agreement in May 2022, bringing to close the companies' three decades-long partnership. As a result, EA was no longer allowed to use the FIFA name for its video game series.
EA had been using the FIFA name since the inaugural game that rolled out in 1993 for the Sega consoles.
The exciting rebrand of EA's premier football video game is billed as "a new Football Club for the future of football we want to build together," said EA is a press release.
A few gaming critics, such as Gaming Bolt have given credit to EA FC 24's gameplay, but critiqued the lack of making meaningful changes in other aspects of the game.
GameSpot have dubbed EA FC 24 a "new game, same game", criticising EA for not changing other areas of the game beyond gameplay.
"EA's latest football sim introduces a number of subtle improvements to its on-pitch action while sprinkling in some incremental additions to long-standing game modes like Ultimate Team and Career. It still offers an exciting, albeit familiar, game of back-and-forth football, but the demanding yearly release schedule isn't doing the series any favors," wrote Richard Wakeling, who added:
"Even with the fancy new rebrand, EA FC is an expected follow-up to FIFA 23, offering a slight evolution rather than anything revelatory."
The Guardian's Keith Stuart gave the game a decent rating of four stars but feels that it's a slight improvement on FIFA 23, which is not what EA promised.
"When you start playing, all your suspicions are confirmed: this is Fifa 24, minus one teeny-weeny multimillion dollar licence," wrote Stuart.
Apart from critics bemoaning the game's lack of revolutionary change to match its ground-breaking rebrand, EA FC 24's first week sales in the UK dropped by 30% for physical copies of the game, which in part, was expected by EA due to the rebrand.
It's no surprise that EA is experiencing some trouble with the rebrand, after generations of gamers grew accustomed to their FIFA titles.
There also seems to be debate over what to actually call EA Sports' new footy game. EA Sports FC 24 might be too long, EA FC 24 is cool but might not be as punchy as FC 24, either it'll take time for this rebrand to truly pay off for EA.
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