FIFA's world cup game is some Roblox nonsense with bowling

pcgamer.com:

Over the last year or so we've watched the dissolution of one of gaming's longest running partnerships, as EA's incredibly successful FIFA series detaches itself from licensing the FIFA name from football's world governing body. Long before this happened publicly senior EA figures would, behind closed doors, hint to miscreants like me that it was coming: because all the value came from EA's side. The videogame publisher has arguably done more to build FIFA as a brand over the last few decades than FIFA has done in its entire history.

Or as EA CEO Andrew Wilson put it to investors: FIFA is just "four letters on the front of the box(opens in new tab)". FIFA itself, which had been dropped after reportedly demanding $1 billion per series entry(opens in new tab), took the news like a spoiled child, with president Gianni Infantino declaring that whatever game had the FIFA branding will be "THE BEST(opens in new tab)", emphasis his.

So this year's FIFA 23 is the last in the series to bear that name (which made me oddly melancholy(opens in new tab)), and next year EA will move on to releasing its football games under the name EA Sports FC(opens in new tab). Meanwhile FIFA is looking for multiple new partners(opens in new tab) and hoping against hope that it can build something to compete against the juggernaut that once bore its name.

It's thus unsurprising that Roblox has been able to persuade FIFA to dip its toes into the wildly successful gaming platform (50 million daily users, according to the press release). Making Roblox games is cheap: or, at least, cheaper than competing with EA. And it also means you can get something out fast to a huge and overwhelmingly young audience.

The collaboration is called FIFA World, «a