FIFA team were told to copy PES

The studio behind FIFA were once recommended to take pointers from the Pro Evolution Soccer series, as they themselves “weren’t liked” for a period of time, despite their market dominance.

Speaking with GamesIndustry International, EA Sports president Andrew Wilson said: “a lot of people were telling us was ‘Pro Evolution Soccer is a great game, just copy them and then you’ll win on marketing! It’s a sure fire way to win.’ That just wasn’t that interesting to us.”

He went on to describe how FIFA was at a stage where the games weren’t as widely accepted as they should be, and they had a goal in mind to return FIFA to its glory days.

“We had this dream of ‘wouldn’t it be amazing if by the time we got to the 2010 World Cup, we could have 11 on 11 online play with 22 real humans around the globe?’ Wouldn’t that be amazing?”

“And I remember the first time we stood up and gave that presentation the company thought we had rocks in our head.”

Andrew Wilson

EA Sports obviously did implement their idea and full 11v11 online matches were introduced in FIFA 11, along with core controls being improved, which gave the game a great worldwide reception.

But Wilson isn’t caught up on the past, as he’s looking to what the future hold for the FIFA series.

“A 90 rated game is the expectation on console, moving forward a 90 rated game supported by an annual service that connects you with tens of millions of gamers around the world across platform is going to be the new definition of quality.”

Wilson recently attended an event where he introduced the features being focused on for FIFA 13, which should drop in its annual October release.