EA Mobile has officially launched FIFA 12 today. The blockbuster game
will be an exclusive on the Sony Ericsson Xperia PLAY until February
2012 and as confirmed
yesterday
it will be FREE for a limited period. You can find FIFA 12 on the
Xperia PLAY game launcher and you’ll need around 1.5GB of space on your
SD card.
FIFA 12 has improved upon FIFA 10 in several areas including gameplay
depth, authentic commentaries, updated teams from the top leagues and
new replay systems. Interestingly, we are told that FIFA 12 will also be
available exclusively on the wider Xperia range in due course.
Sony Ericsson held a live webchat for the media yesterday with EA
Mobile. We’ve included excerpts of the transcript below that is well
worth a read. You can read how EA Mobile ported FIFA 12 to the Xperia
PLAY, improvements it has made to the game as well as thoughts on the
Xperia PLAY hardware. Read it all below.
Live webchat transcript discussing FIFA 12 on the Xperia PLAY
Below are excerpts from a live webchat that took place on 30
November to discuss the launch of FIFA 12 on the Xperia PLAY. In
attendance was Tim Harrison, Head of Content Marketing & Strategy at
Sony Ericsson who hosted the call and Andrei Lazarescu and Alexandru
Ruse from EA Mobile.
Andrei Lazarescu has produced FIFA games on mobile platforms since
2009 and when not creating FIFA for mobile devices, he enjoys gaming and
getting on the pitch himself.
Alex Ruse has been working in mobile gaming for the past six
years and on FIFA since 2010. He considers it an honour to work on such
a globally renowned franchise with such a talented team, heralding FIFA
as one of the most challenging yet exciting projects he’s worked on
during his career.
FIFA12 requires no introduction, it’s a huge global franchise
and the release has been a huge hit, most recently on consoles with the
recent FIFA12 launch, so what will this latest instalment bring to
Smartphone gaming?
Andrei Lazarescu: This year, fans can expect greater gameplay depth,
authentic commentaries, updated teams from the world’s top leagues, and
new replay systems and stadium designs to make for a more powerful FIFA
mobile experience.
What was the most challenging aspect of taking a huge game like FIFA 12 and porting to the Xperia PLAY?
Andrei Lazarescu: A lot of things, but surely the most important one
is optimizing the engine so that it could run on a mobile platform.
We’re really proud of what we have managed to achieve this year, we
think fans will agree that the game is a beautiful game and also adapted
to the Xperia Play.
How has the game been optimized for the Xperia PLAY?
Alex Ruse: One of the things we spent the most time on was the
controls. We went through a lot of iterations to make sure they fully
exploit both the touchscreen, and the hardware PLAY controls.
Regarding the multiplayer aspect of the game: is it going to support servers or only have local options like Bluetooth.
Alex Ruse: For our first foray into Android, we wanted to make sure
we get the football gameplay just right, and that we fit perfectly with
the platform. So no multiplayer right now, not in the first release. We
want the single-player to be 100% right first.
Did you feel limited in any way by the Xperia PLAY hardware
when developing FIFA 12, or were you able to keep your original vision
intact?
Andrei Lazarescu: We have managed to include in the initial release
all the features that were planned for and the Xperia Play hardware even
allowed us to have top notch graphics.
What do you think has been the biggest step forward with this iteration?
Alex Ruse: Definitely the graphics and the football engine. It’s an
amazing experience, and everyone play testing this was blown away by the
new visuals. It runs silky smooth, and the PLAY controls really blend
in with that.
When you look at FIFA 12 for the consoles: where there any
key aspect like physics or something you definitely wanted to carry over
to the Xperia PLAY version?
Andrei Lazarescu: We would have definitely wanted to emulate the ball
and player physics from the console version. However, the mobile
platform doesn’t yet allow us to use the full engine of the console
version.
Based on the other titles EA have produced as exclusives for
the PLAY, do you think PLAY owners sway towards the sporting genre as
it’s most popular? What kind of gamer has the PLAY predominantly
attracted, based on the sales of your titles?
Tim Harrison: Certainly sports is a popular category. Shooters too.
The physical gamepad certainly lends itself very well to any games that
utilise directional rather than gestural controls
Andrei Lazarescu: I think we got really close, the game flow is very
enjoyable and users have a lot of possible plays at their disposal.
With graphics being a huge part of gaming do you see a Tegra 3
version of the game coming in the future or will the current version
perform better with that type of CPU?
Alex Ruse: At the core of the FIFA franchise, our vision is to create
the most authentic FIFA experience that fosters one of the largest
football communities on the planet so the team took special care to
ensure that authenticity carried through on PLAY.
Tim Harrison: That said, we’re seeing a very broad range of content
downloaded on PLAY – it isn’t easy to generalise. PLAY just makes good
games even greater and owners are responding!
In terms of market share where do you see mobile gaming for
this series in comparison with the PSP market? Will it outsell in volume
the number of units sold?
Alex Ruse: The current version won’t be significantly improved
running on Tegra’s but the engine we built is very capable and
expandable. It will should allow us to scale gracefully on anything I
can think of at least for a year.
How long is the Xperia Play exclusivity period? Once this
comes to other devices will we see it optimized for Android tablets as
well as handheld devices?
Tim Harrison: The title will be exclusive on Android to Xperia until
February. And we’re delighted it will also be coming to the wider Xperia
family very soon.
Alex Ruse: We’re certainly seeing major growth on mobile gaming right
now, with the platforms becoming increasingly more powerful. Hard to
speculate on who will come out on top, but we’re really excited about
the upcoming mobile games, and the market trend.
According to you, what part of FIFA 12 is more awesome in this version?
Andrei Lazarescu: The whole game is more awesome! To highlight the
two things I am most excited about I would have to say the graphics and
the controls. The player models and animations are top notch and the
controls are beautifully adapted to both the PLAY hardware buttons and
touch screen.
Did you use a previous FIFA android engine or the engine from a FIFA 12 console game?
Alex Ruse: The engine is not based on a previous Android one. We used
a lot of knowledge and libraries from the Console team into building an
optimized, high-end smartphone engine.
Is FIFA 12 cross platform between Xperia Play and PSP for example?
Alex Ruse: No, FIFA 12 Xperia and the PSP version are quite different
games right now. There won’t be any cross-play or anything like that
for now.
And what are the key differences/improvements between FIFA 10 and FIFA 12 on the Xperia PLAY?
Andrei Lazarescu: The most significant difference is the engine. As
mentioned earlier, for FIFA 12 we have created a completely new engine
and have adapted it to the mobile platform. All game areas have been
completely revamped: AI, controls, speech, chants, graphics and menus.
As developers, how confident are you in the Xperia Play’s
ability to compete as a gaming platform alongside faster multi-core
phones over the next year?
Alex Ruse: We were pretty amazed by the PLAY’s performance during
development. It really is a very powerful device. I don’t think it will
become obsolete in a year’s time, developers won’t really build for just
one super high-end device. And upgrading game engines takes time too.
Will Ultimate Team ever be part of the game on the mobile?
Alex Ruse: Nothing to announce on Ultimate Team just yet. That said,
we feel it really fits with the mobile gamer, the freemium mobile model,
and it’s a superb game mode to take on the go.
PES and FIFA have always been compared, with this mobile
variant are the key features that make FIFA stand out, the same as with
its console counterpart?
Andrei Lazarescu: We’re on a different market here, the mobile one.
We have adapted the game to fit both the device and the market we’re in
so for this release we have focused on the core features: controls, AI
and graphics. Right now, we believe these are the features that make the
game stand out. At the same time, this version meets the same FIFA
brand values that we are used to.
Was it challenging to provide the same feeling of playing FIFA like on consoles?
Andrei Lazarescu: I believe PLAY is the closest to replicating the console experience in smartphone gaming.
What is the minimum hardware spec needed to make the game run when it’s released for other handsets?
Alex Ruse: Ballpark figures, the engine should run smooth on at least
600MHz CPU, PowerVR SGX 535 graphics and at least 256 MB of RAM. That’s
the lowest, but it can scale very well to monster devices, with dynamic
shadows, lighting, weather conditions, antialiasing, background audio
mixing and animated crowds.
Have you had any feedback from footballers who have played
FIFA 12 on the Xperia PLAY? And were any of them involved in the
development of the mobile game?
Tim Harrison: Well, we sent Jack Wilshere a PLAY to take his mind off things, and he thanked us at least.
Andrei Lazarescu: We know that footballers, as well as athletes
outside the sport are loyal FIFA fans. PLAY gives them another way to
experience it.
Thanks Xperiablog!
