EA Makes Minor Tweaks To FIFA 12 For the Wii, Releases It As FIFA 13 [Slashdot]

[DP ServBot]

An article at Nintendo Gamer highlights how Electronic Arts put almost no work into the latest Wii release of their FIFA soccer game franchise, but didn't hesitate to push it out the door anyway. Side-by-side screenshots show the Wii version of FIFA 12 got some minor graphical tweaks — a different splash screen, slightly modified logos, different colored socks on the players — before being re-released as FIFA 13. From the article: "This is something that needs to be highlighted, because while it would be easy to pass it off and say 'meh, it’s just the Wii version,' the fact remains that this game does still sell relatively well. This isn’t guesswork – as journalists we receive confidential sales figures and though we’re legally bound not to reveal those figures, we can at least say with confidence that FIFA 12 did pretty well for a Wii game this close to the console’s death. The Wii U version of FIFA 13 will no doubt be a fantastic game, since it’ll share a lot (if not all) of the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions’ features. The 3DS version is a solid improvement over last year’s effort, and worth a look if you’re into some handheld football action. This, however – a £30 roster update – is unacceptable."

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[j_factor]

Isn't that every FIFA game?

[kupomogli]

Apparently it's like the NFL Madden 12 game on the Vita which was released as NFL Madden 13. I don't get it either. Why port 12 rather than 13 when you're still having to port a game, but I'm only hearing what sports fans are saying and don't know if there's any actual truth behind this.

[kedawa]

——’’–&rsquo’&r squo;’’’–£&ndash

There has to be a way to fix this crap. It's just text ffs.

[WCP]

Apparently it's like the NFL Madden 12 game on the Vita which was released as NFL Madden 13. I don't get it either. Why port 12 rather than 13 when you're still having to port a game, but I'm only hearing what sports fans are saying and don't know if there's any actual truth behind this.

It's lazyness and greed.

[Zama]

This is no surprise Evil, evil, EVIL!

[Nature Boy]

Ahh, the yearly sports franchises. Everybody's favourite whipping boy.

Those WII owners that do happen to get affected may be disappointed, but seriously, how many people would that be at this point? How many hard core sports fans exclusively own a WII?

[xelement5x]

There has to be a way to fix this crap. It's just text ffs.

I was thinking the same thing. Not to rail on ServBot yet again but it's not that hard to just do a replace on these strings before you cross post.

I'm guessing it has to do with the source being HTML and the destination (DigitalPress) just using forum shorthand and not being able to interpret the HTML escaped characters.

[skaar]

It's lazyness and greed.

It's called the entertainment industry.

[BydoEmpire]

Good or bad, it is what it is. They don't plan on selling enough copies to justify spending much on development, but they can justify releasing the game if they only do a few tweaks from the previous year. If you're only going to sell 50k units (if that) you can't afford to spend much on development. The point is, there is a market for this game, it's just very small.

The questions is, would the handful of folks that will buy FIFA 13 on Wii prefer to have a version with only modest tweaks, roster updates, etc, or would they prefer to have no FIFA 13 at all? At some point, probably next year, it's going to be the latter.

It's no different for any other end-of-life-cycle sports games.