EA Sports FC 24 arrives as the first game in EA Sports’ football series after the publisher’s licensing deal with FIFA ended. It is the 31st overall entry in EA’s long-running football simulation line, and it carries the weight of a rebrand on top of the usual annual demand for better pitches, better squads, better ball physics. The name changed. The questions did not.
Trailer, via EA SPORTS FC.
A New Name Over the Same Engine
EA Sports FC 24 was released on 29 September 2023 for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. It is developed by EA Vancouver and EA Romania and published by EA Sports. The game runs on the Frostbite engine, with updated motion capture and ball physics meant to make on-pitch action read as realistic.
The license portfolio is the headline. EA Sports FC 24 includes the Premier League, UEFA Champions League, La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A, and several women’s football leagues. That is the argument for the rebrand: the FIFA name is gone, but the competitions that fill the calendar are still here.
The modes are the same three pillars EA has leaned on for years. Ultimate Team returns. Career Mode returns. Online multiplayer returns, alongside single-player and co-operative play. The camera sits in third person, with a bird’s-eye and isometric view available. The genres listed are simulator and sport, with non-fiction themes.
Ultimate Team, Career Mode, and the Frostbite Pitch
The structure of EA Sports FC 24 will be familiar to anyone who played FIFA 23. That is not a knock on its own. The rebrand was never going to rebuild the sport from the studs up, and EA has been clear that this is a continuation, not a reinvention.
What the game asks you to judge is execution. Frostbite is the engine. Motion capture and ball physics are the stated upgrades. Those are the details that decide whether a football simulation feels like football or like a spreadsheet with grass on it. The source material does not give us a frame-by-frame account of how those systems perform, and this review will not invent one.
What we can say is what the game offers. Licensed leagues. Licensed competitions. Women’s football leagues included in the package, not bolted on as an afterthought. Three modes that cover solo play, competitive online play, and co-operative play. A third-person camera with an isometric option for players who want the whole pitch in view. That is a complete feature set on paper.
The question is whether a complete feature set is enough in 2023.
The Scoreboard
EA Sports FC 24 holds a published critical score of 6.6/10, based on an IGDB critic aggregate of six outlets. That is the number this review matches, and it is a fair one. Not a disaster. Not a triumph. A game that does the job and does not move the line.
| Date | Release | Platforms |
|---|---|---|
| 29 September 2023 | EA Sports FC 24 | Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S |
Six outlets is a small sample. That matters. A 6.6 from six critics is a signal, not a verdict carved in stone, and it should be read as one. But the number lands where the game lands: competent, licensed, familiar, and short of the leap the rebrand implied.
What the Rebrand Actually Changed
Here is the part worth watching. Electronic Arts ended its partnership with FIFA after FIFA 23. EA Sports FC 24 is the inaugural installment in the EA Sports FC series. That is a real structural change for the biggest football game on the market, and it happened without the game itself changing much.
The competitions stayed. The modes stayed. The engine stayed, with updates. What left was the name, and with it the assumption that the series would keep coasting on the FIFA brand. EA Sports FC 24 has to stand on its own licensing and its own Frostbite pitch now.
That is a harder position than it looks. FIFA 23 could sell itself. EA Sports FC 24 has to sell the football. The Premier League, the Champions League, La Liga, the Bundesliga, Serie A, and the women’s leagues are the proof that the football is still there. Whether that is enough to justify a full-price annual purchase is the question every player will answer for themselves.
The Verdict on EA Sports FC 24
EA Sports FC 24 is a football simulation with the licenses you expect, the modes you expect, and the engine updates you expect. It is the 31st overall installment of EA Sports’ football simulation games, and it plays like it. The rebrand from FIFA is the story here, not the gameplay.
That is the honest read of a 6.6/10. The game is not broken. The game is not bold. It is the first step in a new series that has not yet shown what the new series is for. The women’s leagues are in. The Champions League is in. Ultimate Team, Career Mode, and online multiplayer are in. Frostbite is running with updated motion capture and ball physics.
None of that is a reason to skip it. None of it is a reason to rush out either, unless you were always going to buy the year’s football game, in which case this is the year’s football game and it will do.
What would move the number up is a clearer answer to a simple question: what does EA Sports FC do that FIFA could not? The source material does not give one, and the game, on the evidence available, does not either. A 6.6 is the score of a game that changed its name and kept its habits. The next entry is where we find out whether the rebrand meant anything.
Score: 6.6 of 10.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
