The next installment in the wildly successful football game series, FIFA 23, will be the last to be developed by EA Sports. However, how will FIFA 23 be different from FIFA 22? We've detailed all of the significant differences below, so you know the exact upgrades you’ll be getting.
Women's football clubs
The advent of women's club teams is this year's most noteworthy change to FIFA. To play as a team in the Barclays FA Women's Super League or Division 1 Arkema, you can now select from the list of official teams in both leagues. While previous installments have allowed you to lead a women's national team, FIFA 22 will mark the first time the franchise has incorporated women's club football. Newer game systems with HyperMotion2 technology should also deliver authentic female football gameplay.
Crossplay
Due to positive feedback from FIFA 22 cross-play tests, EA Sports has decided to implement cross-play across a wider variety of game modes. As an example, FIFA Ultimate Team's Division Rivals mode (excluding Co-Op), Champions mode, Ultimate Online Draft mode, Online Friendlies mode (except Co-Op), Play a Friend mode, Online Friendlies, and Online Seasons modes (except Co-Op Seasons). EA has also made it clear that you can only play with people who are using the same generation of consoles as you are. That means players on the PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC can compete with each other, but those on the PS4 and Xbox One can't. That being said, it's a huge improvement.
Playable highlights in Career Mode
Especially if you draw a team like Burnley in the FA Cup, a season might take a long time to complete in Career Mode, thus there's always the desire to mimic a match. This has the drawback of being a fairly hands-off activity. EA Sports has added a compromise mode that lets you watch simply the highlights of a game. Most of the game will be simulated, but when a player has a fantastic chance to score or a defense needs to make a crucial tackle, you'll take back control. In this way, you can have an effect on the outcome of the game without having to watch every minute of it. It's the equivalent of having free reign over Match of the Day.
More realistic animations
EA has put a lot of effort into making FIFA 23's player animations look more as they do in real life. The HyperMotion2 technology has allowed EA to collect twice as much information as previously. This supposedly results in 6,000 lifelike football animations, making it so that players look and act like the football great they are emulating. EA claims that it has given special emphasis to enhancing the animations of players taking shots and goalkeepers grasping for the ball. If you're still playing on a PS4 or Xbox One, I'm sorry to say that you'll have to wait until the release of the PS5 or Xbox Series X/S, PC, or Google Stadia to take advantage of the HyperMotion2 technology.
Power shots and redesigned set pieces
A new mechanic known as "power shots" has been added to the gameplay thanks to EA Sports' minor changes. As it demands more precision to perform but sends the ball torpedoing towards goal at faster speeds, EA defines it as a high-risk, high-reward concept. Improvements have also been made to set pieces, with the player now having more control over the ball's trajectory, curl, and direction depending on where they make contact with it. EA also claims that the new corner camera angles would provide more tension to set pieces.
Moments in Ultimate Team
EA Sports has announced a brand new single-player experience for Ultimate Team fans called Moments. Moments are shorter challenges that pop up during the game, rather than occurring over a standard 90-minute match. Your goal in the first three minutes as a defense, for instance, or your successful completion of a rainbow flip, could be examples of such tasks. The developers will come up with many of these challenges on their own, but some will be based on games from the past weekend and ask you to replicate goals by players like Salah, Kane, and Haaland. In order to level up your team, you'll need to complete tasks and earn stars to buy card packs and borrow players. EA Sports is also reworking Ultimate Team's chemistry to allow players to form bonds with teammates who don't play in close proximity (e.g. Trent Alexander-Arnold and Andy Robertson). Now that most players can play more than one position, Son Heung-min can switch between center field, left wing, and right wing.