EA Sports’ FIFA World Cup tie in videogame, 2014 FIFA World Cup, will not be coming to the Xbox One or the PlayStation 4, instead hitting only the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. It was a baffling decision, and one that EA itself seems to regret.
“So we started off with the initial concept and the thought that it would be a across both of those [console generations] but then as things progressed, it became a decision that we have only a certain amount of resources and we need to focus those resources to get to the most people as we possibly can,” producer Matthew Prior told Sportra.com.
“Nobody wanted to make a gen-4 title more than me, believe me, I mean it was disappointing in that sense but at the same time it was the right decision in terms of getting it to the most people,” explained Prior. For reference, EA calls the Xbox One and PS4 ‘gen 4 consoles’ (they are, in fact, eighth generation consoles, but let’s not tell EA that).
“Once the numbers started rolling in that’s way too late in the cycle for us to make a decision, because these games are massive, they take a lot of effort,” said Prior.
“Unfortunately we weren’t really able to react to that increased uptake, I think everybody was taken aback pleasantly by how many people bought the consoles. So I think it was a kind of good news story in that event, but unfortunately it was at a time where it passed where we could do a proper product.
“You know, you could have potentially rushed one out, or whatever, but you know we wanted to kind of do it justice and all the rest of it. You don’t want to kind of rush out some half-finished coat of paint kind of deal.
“So all of that kind of happened way past any time we could really action on it, so it’s good news in the sense that the uptake’s huge, bad in the sense that we weren’t able to leverage that and turn it around.”
If the Xbox One and PS4 had at least some kind of backwards compatibility, this wouldn’t even have been as much of an issue, but as it stands… well.
2014 FIFA World Cup will hit the Xbox 360 and PS3 June 17.