EA confirms, Fifa 14 will be freemium

During EA’s presentation at Gamescom 2013, Andrew Wilson the vice president of EA Sports confirmed that Fifa ’14 for mobile devices will be free to play. It appears that EA in general will be orienting towards the freemium model, following the trend of Real Racing and Plants vs Zombies 2 (that is sill not available worldwide btw) on most of their new games as well.

Unfortunately, only the PS4 gameplay footage was shown during the presentation, and except the “free to play” bomb, they didn’t mention pretty much anything else about the mobile version. What we know from before is that Fifa 14 will use revamped controls including tap to pass and swipe to shoot (exciting!..not).

The decision to make one of the most famous football/soccer franchises free should not be taken lightly. Some will praise the fact that they can play for free, but the ultimate price for anyone wanting to experience the game as they did before will be much much higher. Foolishly assuming that fans will drop tons of cash in IAPs and other microtransactions can backfire pretty badly, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves and wait for the final product. Maybe (hopefully) EA Sports will prove me wrong.

The release date remains unknown, but considering the fact that the transfer window closes on August 31, it would be safe to say that we can expect the game somewhere in mid September. That should give EA Sports plenty of time to rearrange the roster and fix additional bugs.