AfterDawn: News

FIFA 08 producer Joe Booth has talked to GamesIndustry.biz about the football genre in the games industry. "There seems to be more and more appetite for football games," Booth said. "People treat football games a bit like they treat first-person shooters - they don't just buy one game, they buy two or three games through the year anyway." Last year's FIFA topped the best seller list in the UK in its fight with Konami's Pro Evolution Soccer.

"I think that's something we ask ourselves - not how do we beat Konami, but how do we move the genre forward, and what opportunities are there," Booth said. "We have to assume that Konami are going to come out and be very strong. If we only assume they're on their current trend, then we'd be complacent. As gamers, we want that as well. We like the competition."



Booth, who worked on last year's PS2 and PC versions of FIFA, has been inspired to push for a greater dialogue between developers and gamers. "What we've been doing is trying to change the organization - the whole of EA - to this year-long relationship with the gamer, which is quite hard, because the business is optimized for annual launches of games," Booth observed.

FIFA 08 will be released for the PlayStation 3 (PS3) and Xbox 360 platforms in September or October this year.

Source:
GamesIndustry.biz

Written by: James Delahunty @ 1 Jun 2007 5:55