With its standard end-of-September release window fast approaching, EA Sports has given us our first look at what FIFA 23 is going to look like — and how it’s going to make history.
The most significant of the announcements made this week came on Monday, when the company revealed that Chelsea striker and Matildas captain Sam Kerr will become the first woman to feature as one of the game’s global cover athletes. Although women have appeared on FIFA covers in the past, they’ve only ever done so on special regional covers; Kerr, on the other hand, will appear alongside French superstar Kylian Mbappé on the global covers of both the standard and Ultimate editions of the game. Kerr has already been a fantastic ambassador for women’s football — and women’s sports in general — throughout her decorated career, but this latest achievement solidifies her as one of the faces of the sport going forward, and further displays EA’s commitment to highlighting the women’s game to its audience.
After letting the cover announcement sink in, EA also released its first FIFA 23 trailer, a two-and-a-half minute montage of footage from both men’s and women’s games from locations around the world that shows off the game’s typically-impressive visuals and some of the atmospheres we can expect to see in the game itself. As that’s happening, a voiceover walks us through some of the improvements coming to this iteration: enhanced player awareness, new acceleration mechanics, and a revamped dribbling system with smoother transitions into shooting. On top of that, EA’s Hypermotion 2 technology will add more animations and more realistic physical responses to the PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and Google Stadia versions of the game.
In addition to the gameplay trailer, EA shared a little more about what’s coming to the game on its official website. There, the company revealed that, for the first time in the series’ three-decade history, FIFA 23 will feature women’s club football, with licenses for both the Barclays FA Women’s Super League and France’s Division 1 Arkema. It’ll also include two World Cup game modes — the men’s World Cup in Qatar later this year, and the women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand next year — as “post-launch content updates at no additional cost.” The site also boasts the typical improvements to Career Mode, Ultimate Team, Pro Clubs, VOLTA Football and the “matchday experience”, but we’ll hear more about those improvements in the coming weeks and months.
FIFA 23 — which is also set to be EA’s final release using the FIFA title — is set to be released on Nintendo Switch (as a “Legacy edition”), PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S on September 30.
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