Electronic Arts recently announced the development of a free-to-play downloadable game titled EA Sports FIFA Online. Similar to their recent web based Tiger Woods Title gamers don’t have to install much to play the game; however FIFA Online at this point will require a download and will run as a separate program rather than in a web browser. Starting February 3^rd football fans across Europe will have first access to the closed beta to help shape the online title.

“Listening to and engaging football fans has been one of the driving forces behind the success of our FIFA franchise and now we are inviting European football fans – in mass numbers and earlier than we ever have before – to help us develop a new football game,” said Executive Producer Kaz Makita.

With FIFA Online EA Sports is attempting to hit the more casual fans saying “There are a large number of football fans who do not want a console gaming experience due to time and other priorities in their personal lives, but they still want to be able to play a top-quality football videogame.” FIFA on consoles can be intimidating for those who haven’t played the title in years and with EA’s goal of creating a control scheme that uses only the mouse, FIFA Online could be the title that will capture the casual audience.

They will be accepting 20,000 people for the initial closed beta testing and in the coming months leading to the open beta in June, more and more people will be accepted into the beta. The English language version will be available to everyone by June 2010 and over the next year or two they will add other languages across Europe and then in North America.

FIFA Online will feature an authentic football experience with 30 licensed leagues, 500 clubs and all your favorite players. The closed beta will feature a World Cup Mode, a League Mode which includes the ability to play online matches. Of course since it’s free-to-play that doesn’t mean everything is free “FIFA Online will enable football fans and gamers to build their favorite club into their dream team by developing or acquiring players, upgrading skills, and getting unique apparel by earning in-game currency to acquire items or through micro-transactions. Additional content will be designed for the game based on feedback by fans.”

With titles like Battlefield Heroes and Tiger Woods Online, it looks like EA is trying their hardest to prevent people from being productive at work. For all of you who don’t mind wasting countless hours at work playing online games and are tired of all the Facebook games, we can only hope that this trend continues with EA. You can register right now to play at http://fifa-online.easports.com and you will be notified when you have been accepted.

Tags: Beta, closed beta, EA, EA Sports, FIFA, FIFA Online

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 31st, 2010 at 1:24 am and is filed under News, PC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.