Electronic Arts’ FIFA 18 will be coming to the Xbox One, PS4, Xbox 360, PS3 and PC later this month but this year marks the debut of the FIFA franchise on the Nintendo Switch. Speaking to GameSpot, FIFA supervising producer Andrei Lazarescu thinks that it’s the “best portable FIFA we’ve ever done.”
However, perhaps more interestingly, Lazarescu believes that FIFA 18 won’t be a one-off title for the Switch. “I think we are going to see more FIFA on Switch in the future,” he said.
Lazarescu also addressed some concerns about modes like The Journey not being present in the Switch version. Long story short, it’s because of Frostbite. The mode simply can’t exist without EA’s proprietary technology. “The Journey is a mode powered by Frostbite [the engine that current-gen versions of the game run on], it only exists because of Frostbite – they are not separate. You can’t just [put it on Switch] without taking the whole Frostbite engine. So because this doesn’t have Frostbite, it doesn’t have The Journey.”
That being said, Lazarescu doesn’t discount future iterations containing The Journey. “If we moved the [Switch] game over to Frostbite, then yes it could happen. But I don’t know if that’s going to happen. Frostbite is a very different beast.”
FIFA 18 is out on September 29th and will feature the usual improvements to the game, the return of Alex Hunter in The Journey mode and Ultimate Team mode. If the success of FIFA 17 is anything to go by, you can expect FIFA 18 to dominate charts, especially in the UK, for the year to come.