EA Sports had an outsize presence at the Xbox Oneâs debut today in Washington, peeling the tape off something called the Ignite Engine and teasing a âvery special relationship,â with the console, while offering few specifics of that beyond some exclusive DLC for the FIFA franchise.
All four sports titles discussed todayâFIFA, Madden, the newly acquired UFC license and a rehabilitated NBA Liveâwill also release for PlayStation 4. Still, itâs meaningful that EA Sports chose the Xbox Oneâs event to showcase its next-generation promises. It was silent for the PS4âs debut.
That means this series of four videos are sports gamersâ first understanding of what the extra processing power of the next console generation will mean to their experience. Andrew Wilson, the executive vice president in charge of EA Sports, said the Ignite Engine will offer âten times more animation detailâ and processing power that translates to better, faster decisionmaking for both player and AI alike.
While yes, the visual fidelity in these clips is tons better than anything youâre playing now, itâll be some time before that claim can be fairly judged. The pre-rendered scenes, particularly those of Lionel Messi and Robert Griffin III, are blood-pumping and dynamic. But some of the animations in the wireframes and technical demonstrationsâparticularly RG3 getting rid of the ball to his halfback as the blitz bears down on himâlook very familiar to longtime players of each series.
NBA Liveâs showpiece scenes make that work look more sophisticated than youâd expect for a title that abruptly canceled its past two editions. That said, EA Sportsâ failure to execute with current-generation hardware for that franchise makes it a legitimate question what theyâre able to do with next-generation technology, even if they put all of their effort into that platform. Realize that while NBA Live 14 is a definite for PS4 and Xbox One, no announcement has been made about a PS3 or Xbox 360 version.
There also needs to be some reading between the lines. EA Sports has never done console-exclusive downloadable content. The publisherâs willingness to scrap Online Passes is assuredly because the Xbox One will feature across-the-board used-game restrictions. We can assume some form of this will be present on the PlayStation 4, whose used-games support still has not been fully addressed.
Sports video games have long been among the games youâd take over to a friendâs home to play on his machine there. If you want to do that on the Xbox One, youâll have to install the title to that machine and pay a fee to do so. Now he gets to keep it. Weâre unclear on what the fee is, or what that means for the original owner, but offhand the viral-sales nature of such a system certainly plays to EA Sportsâ favor.
I still think we are due for major announcements regarding EA Sportsâ next-generation offerings as numberless subscriptions rather than annual releases. (All four games appeared on stage under their upcoming numbered titles.) For now, this is the clearest vision available of what the future of video gaming will mean for sports, one of its oldest and largest-selling genres, worldwide.
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