FIFA 23 breaks records with massive first-week player count

Is FIFA 23 fundamentally a different game from FIFA 22? It definitely is in at least one sense: EA announced today the newest version of the franchise had a record-breaking first week, with more than 10.3 million players getting on and trying out the newest version of FIFA for themselves.

Whether those are FIFA Ultimate Team lifers, Career Mode enthusiasts, or just players that wanted to see Ted Lasso and Coach Beard manage an AFC Richmond match, that’s a massive turn-out for the game in its final year under the FIFA name.

There are more than just some card packs and Ted Lasso in FIFA 23, of course. The newest game has more clubs and partners than ever before and has also brought the Women’s World Cup to the franchise for the very first time, as well as women’s clubs. FIFA 23 also includes the VOLTA arcade mode once again, an ode to old-school gamers who loved the FIFA Street titles, the first of which debuted nearly 20 years ago.

In its press release, EA also touted some of the entertainment partnerships that the game has recently brought in, such as Marvel. While FUT remains the series’ bread and butter in terms of sustained player base and monetization, it’s clear that EA is constantly looking for new ways to keep the content fresh in a genre that can easily grow stale from year to year.

At any rate, it seems that the strategy is working when compared with the release of FIFA 22. That game’s first week saw EA announce a player count of more than 9 million. Even if the game might feel largely the same to many players, adding an extra million to the player base is nothing to sneeze at.