After years of requests from its player base, EA Sports will finally introduce a cross-platform multiplayer system for the upcoming FIFA 23, the next installment of the world-famous soccer franchise.
EA Sports tested the new matchmaking system in FIFA 22 during the past few months and the crossplay feature will be available for players at launch, though with some limitations at first.
PlayStation 4 and Xbox One players will get to play each other, on top of also playing with the newer members of their own console family (PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S). “This is a long time coming for FIFA and we know that our players have been waiting for this,” producer Matt LaFreniere said in a closed presentation last week.
Xbox Series X, PlayStation 5, and PC players will also be able to play among themselves, as well as older members of their console family. This crossplay system will speed up the matchmaking time, which was fine for console players but could be a tad slower for PC users since that player base is considerably smaller.
All of the changes will alter how Ultimate Team, FIFA‘s most popular mode in which players get to assemble their own club and face others, works. The game mode had separate markets for each platform, but now that they’ll compete altogether, the market will be the same for everyone.
This will ultimately benefit PC users, who had to pay a higher price for Ultimate Team cards as a result of having considerably fewer players packing cards and putting them up for sale on the transfer market.
FIFA 23 is set to be the last collab between EA Sports and FIFA since the gaming studio and the international soccer federation will go their separate ways after this version. FIFA 23 will be released on Sept. 30.
