The new football season has kicked off, and with it the relentless excitement surrounding the latest iteration of the finest football gaming franchise on Earth has begun. FIFA 13 is set to include many new features that should not only improve have the loyalists coming back for more, but also give newcomers an easier ride, according to the game’s executive producer, David Rutter.
One area in which FIFA – and every other game on the planet for that matter – seems to wane is cross-platform play. Rutter pointed out in an interview with AusGamers that there are several features in the game – such as profile sharing, leaderboards and other welcome cross-platform features. However, he was also quite direct in his views that he can’t see actual cross-platform gameplay happening in the near future. He said:
Yeah, well for the EA Sports Football club, it kind of is [cross platform], and we’ve been lucky to have brilliant partners in both Sony and Microsoft when dealing with that, and obviously Apple with their iOS devices has been great too. So I think as far as actually being able to play head-to-head, or anything like that, I can’t ever envisage a time when that would happen, but certainly for profiles and things like that, and sharing of certain stuff, is absolutely doable, and we’re really, really pleased that they’re letting us do it.
For most gamers, this will be frustrating to hear. Who wouldn’t want to have PS3 vs. Xbox 360 showdowns in all the best games, and then listen to the online forums light up with arguments about how one console keeps winning due to better controllers, or a slightly smoother frame-rate for a given game?
Despite the lack of cross-platform play, FIFA 13 looks set to continue EA Sports’ dominance of football video-games. The game is set to come out on 28 September, with a demo due out on 11 September
