FIFA is one of the most popular franchises in the gaming industry, especially in the sports genre. The soccer game attracted 45 million unique players on PC, PlayStation 4, Switch and Xbox One during the 2019 annual year. The publishing company, EA Sports, announced this in its fourth-quarter earnings report. However, EA added that this figure included players of both FIFA 19 and FIFA 18 editions.
Currently, FIFA is the biggest game for EA in the market. This can be seen in the recent report published by a market research firm The NPD Group. It reported that FIFA 19 was the ninth best-selling game in the United States between March 2018 and March 2019.
Moreover, in September, EA stated that lifetime sales of the soccer franchise have passed 260 million copies. More than 193 million players have downloaded FIFA Mobile and over 115 million players have registered themselves in FIFA Online 3 and FIFA Online 4, EA revealed.
EA also reported that FIFA Ultimate Team matches increased 15% year-over-year. Ultimate Team is reportedly FIFA’s most popular game mode. Players build teams by collecting real football players. The game also comes with an additional feature by which you can buy packs of new players in exchange with in-game coins or your own cash. These funds help EA a lot.
Furthermore, newly added game modes like FIFA’s 2018 World Cup and FIFA 2019’s UEFA content has boosted these numbers quite well.
Europe is considered a hotbed of soccer. In 2018, FIFA 19 managed to become the best-selling console game in Europe.
COO and CFO Blake Jorgensen went on to say, “FIFA stands out as a robust franchise through a tumultuous year in the video game industry,” in the report.
The publisher also declared that EA Access would be arriving in the PlayStation 4 upcoming July. FIFA will be a part of the Access.