People tell me every year that FIFA is a waste of money. "It's the same game as last year!" they say, every year. A lot of the time, they're largely correct. FIFA is a football sim, and so it doesn't have much wiggle room to change. Sure, if it offered more creative game modes it might feel different, but in fairness, it attempted that with The Journey and Volta – although it remains clear that the lion's share of attention goes to Ultimate Team, which continues to rake in the cash. This year's HyperMotion could make a big difference, but if it does, it will likely be a one-off generational leap rather than a sign of further changes to come. Today though, Pro Evo – the game perennially in FIFA's shadow – just made a huge step in changing the face of the modern football sim. This year, Pro Evo is going free to play.
All that stuff about being the same every year is typically applied to Pro Evo too, although far fewer people buy Konami’s offering, and so far fewer people say it. While FIFA 22's big changes are happening on the pitch, Pro Evo is changing the entire structure of the game. It's going free-to-play, and will be moving away from annual releases – and therefore away from the complaints that it's the same game every year – in favour of regular updates. That's the good news. The bad news? We all have to call it eFootball now, which is just hideous.
Related: FIFA 22's Create A Club Could Be The Best Thing To Happen To Career Mode In YearsGoing free-to-play is smart. A decade ago, Pro Evo was still lagging behind FIFA, but at least it was challenging. It was Arsenal circa 2006 – never that likely to win the league but still amongst the big boys. Now, it's like Arsenal circa now, a shadow of its former self just drifting along aimlessly. I guess going free-to-play is the Daniel Ek takeover? I'm not sure, the Arsenal metaphor is getting strained now, so just like Arsenal should do to their top four hopes, I'm going to let it go.
FIFA and eFootball are now completely different entities. People who would have typically ignored Pro Evo in favour of FIFA will now likely pick it up and try it. The flaws in Pro Evo's playstyle – too sluggish, rigid defending, less adaptable finishing – will remain, and so it's unlikely it'll win too many FIFA fans over this year, but as it continues to grow and develop, it can level the playing field by offering ease off access and low cost. While the game is "the same every year," devs do still have to make it each year, even if a lot of it uses the same features, engine, and overall structure. With eFootball's rolling updates, there's more time to work specifically on these flaws rather than rehashing them, and more scope to offer actual events and game modes beyond FIFA giving a handful of players a boosted Ultimate Team card in a different colour and calling it a day.
eFootball will offer a series of friendly matches for free, with optional DLC for the various different modes. Exactly what these modes are and how much they'll cost is unclear right now, but Konami has promised more info at the end of August – this points to a bigger reveal at Gamescom next month. We know it will include a Match Pass, which seems to be eFootball's version of a Battle Pass, but no other details are known right now.
Things could still go very wrong for eFootball. At launch, unless there is a sudden, miraculous improvement from last year's game, its friendly matches will offer worse gameplay than FIFA. Of course, the counter point is that it's free. But there are very few people who buy FIFA for the Kick-Off mode. It's the Online Mode, the Career Mode, and the Ultimate Team Mode that gets the most attention. eFootball will undoubtedly offer some of these, if not all – Online Mode is confirmed and will even allow cross-gen and cross-platform matches. FIFA supports cross-gen, but not cross-platform, so that's one up for eFootball. However, it all comes down to how much these individual modes cost, whether you're buying them for life or just for the season, how the Match Pass model works is also important. If it’s too expensive, no one will bother with eFootball at all; it has to come in cheaper than FIFA to be worth it. Of course, too cheap and it ends up making a loss for Konami, which is unlikely to lead to long term investment and improvements.
I hate to make Pro Evo's big news all about FIFA, but it seems impossible not to. FIFA has never had to think about Pro Evo's business model, but if eFootball works, it may have to. FIFA has already experimented with showing players what's inside packs as gaming moves on from the lootbox model, and while it can't really change the fact it's a football game, it can change its internal structure to modernise with the times. eFootball going free-to-play could be huge for Pro Evo, but if it forces EA to pay attention, it could be even bigger for FIFA.
A free-to-play FIFA would look very different from eFootball. Ultimate Team would remain the big project, even if it requires some tweaks, while the less popular modes like Volta could be abandoned altogether in favour of smaller, Fortnite style events. FIFA has the budget and clout to take more risks in free-to-play, while eFootball needs to focus on getting players on board with the simple stuff first. Football games have been stagnating for a long time, even if each year brings gradual improvements to the party. eFootball is the biggest change since Ultimate Team itself was introduced, and if it can have even half the impact, it will change the face of the modern football sim forever.
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