FIFA’s Joe Booth: Nothing’s wrong with PS3

 

EuroGamer got to sit with FIFA 08 producer Joe Booth on all the facets of the next-generation soccer title. EA Sports has set up FIFA 08 to become a more “organic” game, featuring a rich AI mindset based on live events happening right in the game. FIFA 08 is also slated to provide a robust online experience on the Nintendo Wii, as speculated.

Now while FIFA 07 is doing great against Konami‘s Pro Soccer Evolution 6 in the U.S., elsewhere PES 6 is grabbing the attention of more serious soccer gamers on various consoles. Booth remains adamant that FIFA 07 is pushing for a broader inlet for newer gamers to enter the genre, although the much larger fraction of fans around the globe is that PES (Winning Eleven as known in some countries) delivers the more enjoyable gameplay experience.

After diving into general details about new points of views introduced by the “Be A Pro” mode and upward scaling of technologies to contend with PES, Eurogamer dropped the big bomb. They asked which of the next-gen platforms was FIFA 08 more easier and better to develop for. Booth seemed happy to reply, saying that the media and most people have thought negatively about the PlayStation 3.

“It’s almost like people have been very anti-PS3 in the media. I don’t think it’s as bad as we’ve made out as developers. What I think it is, is it’s just expensive,” Booth added. Unlike most developers bent on an Xbox 360 development approach, EA spent enormous resources to keep all platforms in mind, so they entered their title considering the PlayStation 3’s unique architecture.

“We understood the architecture from day one as we were rebuilding the gameplay systems. So we always had that distributed processing architecture in mind for these systems,” Booth said. As a result, he explains that there will be not one advantage of an Xbox 360 version of FIFA 08 over the PlayStation 3 version or vice versa.

Booth concluded, “The goal that we have is that they’ll feel the same and glance-look look the same. And any visual difference will be very, very minor. We’re not trying to do additional stuff for either platform at this point.”

 

EuroGamer got to sit with FIFA 08 producer Joe Booth on all the facets of the next-generation soccer title. EA Sports has set up FIFA 08 to become a more “organic” game, featuring a rich AI mindset based on live events happening right in the game. FIFA 08 is also slated to provide a robust online experience on the Nintendo Wii, as speculated.

Now while FIFA 07 is doing great against Konami‘s Pro Soccer Evolution 6 in the U.S., elsewhere PES 6 is grabbing the attention of more serious soccer gamers on various consoles. Booth remains adamant that FIFA 07 is pushing for a broader inlet for newer gamers to enter the genre, although the much larger fraction of fans around the globe is that PES (Winning Eleven as known in some countries) delivers the more enjoyable gameplay experience.

After diving into general details about new points of views introduced by the “Be A Pro” mode and upward scaling of technologies to contend with PES, Eurogamer dropped the big bomb. They asked which of the next-gen platforms was FIFA 08 more easier and better to develop for. Booth seemed happy to reply, saying that the media and most people have thought negatively about the PlayStation 3.

“It’s almost like people have been very anti-PS3 in the media. I don’t think it’s as bad as we’ve made out as developers. What I think it is, is it’s just expensive,” Booth added. Unlike most developers bent on an Xbox 360 development approach, EA spent enormous resources to keep all platforms in mind, so they entered their title considering the PlayStation 3’s unique architecture.

“We understood the architecture from day one as we were rebuilding the gameplay systems. So we always had that distributed processing architecture in mind for these systems,” Booth said. As a result, he explains that there will be not one advantage of an Xbox 360 version of FIFA 08 over the PlayStation 3 version or vice versa.

Booth concluded, “The goal that we have is that they’ll feel the same and glance-look look the same. And any visual difference will be very, very minor. We’re not trying to do additional stuff for either platform at this point.”