'FIFA 16' Already in Development
By John Jacques 02 February 2015
FIFA 15 is already pushing boundaries when it comes to improved next generation visuals and player intelligence, which requires plenty of forethought and planning on the development stage. It also turns out EA Sports has a penchant for getting such design philosophies planned early, as EA Sports’ own chief operating officer Peter Moore has revealed today that the studio is already working on the sequel to FIFA 15, even though this year’s edition isn’t even out almost two more months.
EA Sports has hundreds of employees working towards creating the FIFA franchise, though most would expect them all to be working on the same title. An undetermined amount of those employees are already working on making FIFA 16 stand out from the crowd, and with more than a year before most gamers will be thinking about the game, it’s good to see EA Sports is doing everything they can to put themselves in a good position for their tight release schedule.
Moore didn’t go into details on what features they’re working on implementing, but the revelation of such pre-planning is certainly food for thought:
There are two phases to [development]. There’s the core game itself. We have several hundred people working on that and it’s a staggered development process, so there are already people working on FIFA 16.
Moore went on to explain that a lot of people had the idea that video games were concurrently made by one team at a time, and when the game launched the team would go on vacation before working on downloadable content or potential sequels. Of course, in reality this isn’t true, as members of the development team must always be looking at engine updates and a variety of other design decisions which need to be made as soon as possible. This means that in plenty of situations, broad strokes of design are put down for some sequels even while their predecessors are still in development, which is the case for FIFA.
Notably, Moore also said that ‘on some levels’ there were design choices for FIFA 17 being considered, indicating that the company is attempting to get as far ahead as they can. This makes sense considering they have a yearly release cycle and fan expectations to appease.
This year’s iteration of FIFA is set to be the most realistic one yet, with hundreds of new player emotions and a complete realism update for the Barclay’s Premier League. With features like poised to rocket the FIFA franchise to new heights, we can only imagine what the studio has in store for next year.
FIFA 15 is set for a September 23rd release date on Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS4, PS3 and PC.
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Source: VideoGamer
You can follow John Jacques on Twitter @Makelevi.
