FIFA Street kicks off
EA announces that the latest in its 'Street' series will focus on the beautiful game.
Having enjoyed success dragging basketball and even American football out of the megabucks arenas for its five-a-side style Street series, Electronic Arts is now planning a football game along similar lines. "FIFA Street" is due out on PS2, Xbox and Cube in 2005.
The game is being developed by a new team at EA Canada in Vancouver, which also plays host to the dev team responsible for the FIFA series. According to EA, FIFA Street will feature real football players going at one another in 4-on-4 and 1-on-1 matches in various street-y environments worldwide. Presumably with some sort of rap star commentating over the top...
The idea will be to build up street cred and take your own team of real players - and one custom avatar, going on past experience - from the gutters of Edgware to the glamour of, goodness knows, wherever they have those fancy paving stones and street sweepers. That'll be the like.
Senior producer Wil Mozell is confident FIFA Street can tap gamers who want to express themselves a bit more than they can in the likes of FIFA Football 2005. "We are stripping the sport down to its core and delivering a game that's all about freestyle attitude and individual skill, something I believe is at the heart of every football fan," he said last week.
Indeed, we're certainly hoping EA can deliver on its promise. It's been a long while since we've had a convincing off-the-wall football title like Red Card Soccer or SEGA Soccer Slam, and Thierry Henry-style dramatic close control is undoubtedly underexploited by the current crop of football titles. We'll watch this with interest.
Oh, and if you have a copy of FIFA Football 2005, you can watch it for yourself; there should be a short trailer for the game located on the disc. Let us know what you think...