EA has sold over 4.5 million copies of FIFA 13 in just five days.
Football – proper football, where the ball actually spends a lot of time in contact with people’s feet – is still struggling to find a sizable audience in North America. This is made readily apparent by the respective sales of EA’s FIFA 13.
In the 24 hours following their North American release, the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of the best-selling sports franchise clocked up a respectable 353,000 sales between them. This pales in comparison to the UK launch, however, which racked up 1.23 million sales in 48 hours. Surprise! The UK likes football.
Over the past five days, worldwide sales of the game have surpassed the 4.5 million mark, making it the biggest launch of 2012 and the biggest sports game release of all time if EA’s claims are to be believed. The company made similar claims about FIFA Soccer 10, which sold only 1.7 million copies in its first week. Last year’s installment – which due to EA’s dreadfully boring naming conventions is not called FIFA: Rise of the Soccer Lizards – sold 3.2 million copies on consoles, with another 890,000 on iOS.
FIFA 13‘s online modes are also proving popular. According to EA, the game boasts some 800,000 simultaneous players, making it one of the most popular online games in the company’s history.
The critical response to the game has been positive, with a couple of outlets dishing out those precious 10/10 scores. The physics engine introduced in FIFA 12 has been tweaked, making it far more predictable and, sadly, far less funny.
Source: GamesIndustry
