With football fever running high, EA has spotted that it’s just the right time to bring their popular video game franchise to the SNS platform. EA Sports has announced that FIFA Superstars is out on Facebook as a free-to-play social game.
“We are leveraging our football expertise with the experience of our partners at Playfish to create a casual football game for a broader audience. Football fans have a voracious appetite for their sport so we are creating interactive football entertainment in new ways and on new platforms to meet the interest. We are excited to broaden our reach from the console that touches our core audience of 10-20 million fans to the hundreds of millions of football fans and casual gamers using social networks,” averred Matt Bilbey, vice president of football, EA Sports.
The game comes out of a joint collaboration between Playfish and EA Sports, the former of which has titles like Restaurant City and Pet Society to its credit. Players can put together their own club by assembling and swapping players, compare leaderboard scores, contest in leagues or challenge friends head-on. Fans can even exploit the current football spirit by predicting the outcomes of 2010 FIFA World Cup games to earn in-game coins. FIFA Superstars is likely to entice most avid football buffs since it makes good use of EA Sports’ football licenses for 15,000 players, 30 leagues and 500 teams.
“On the eve of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, we’re introducing into social gaming an entirely new category and game play style built around the most popular sports franchise in the world,” remarked Kristian Segerstrale, vice president and general manager of Playfish. “EA Sports FIFA Superstars captures all the magic and passion of the beautiful game, allowing players to build and manage a team of the world’s greatest footballers and compete against their friends. We’re looking forward to working with our players and evolving the game in many exciting ways through the FIFA World Cup and beyond.”
What’s more, EA Sports has revealed that members of other social networking sites can also look forward to welcoming FIFA Superstars at a later date.