Andrine Stolsmo Hegerberg accidently spills the beans on a new team via Instagram
It seems Andrine Stolsmo Hegerberg of the
Norweigan women's team has just confirmed that EA will be expanding the
selection of female teams in FIFA 17 when it's released later this
year.
Posting to her Instagram account, the midfielder uploaded a photo of her face being scanned by a camera crew with the hashtag #fifa17, along with a wry comment that translates as "Rumoured that COD [Call of Duty] also wanted some of the pictures."
So more women's teams on the way, but who else will be added?
Realistically, EA probably doesn't give that much credence to internet
polls when planning on features for their games – which, let me be
clear, is a good thing. If they do, however, the FIFPlay poll of leagues to add is interesting, if not exactly scientific.Â
Polls don't tend to work well when there are more than 70 individual choices. Considering that limitation, though, the results are surprisingly clear-cut with a whopping 2.1 million votes counted. The Israeli league currently leads the pack with 405,563 votes, closely followed by the Turkish PTT League (the second division of Turkish football) with 404,385 votes. The third tier of German football is in third, followed by the Egyptian and Hungarian leagues.
With the number of high-profile players moving to the
Chinese Super League – welcoming former Ultimate Team stalwarts
Gervinho, Alex Teixeira, Jackson Martinez and Ramires to their ranks –
you'd expect that to be a popular choice for FIFA fans, even
if it is just to poach the best players back. However, only 1% of those
surveyed seemed to back it. That's the same percentage that wants to
see the Welsh league and English conference represented.
Public polls are obviously open to heavy gaming, and entirely dependent on who sees them (I remember a poll on a website I once worked on being inundated by BlackBerry fans, turning the results against popular public opinion), but it's interesting, nonetheless.
I adore FIFA, but it’s broadly a love that’s unrequited. My Xbox isn’t a fan, either, I’d imagine, as Ultimate Team seasons have a tendency to result in the mistreatment of gamepads. FIFA 17 will probably follow the same pattern.
Still, despite the fact that my crowning achievement in the franchise was briefly leading Alsville Rovers (yes, really) to an extremely brief period in Division Two in Ultimate Team, when all the good players were distracted by World Cup Mode, I remain unlikely to be able to resist its charms when FIFA 17 arrives in eight months' time.
So what can we expect in FIFA 17?
EA tends to keep its cards close to its chest about upcoming
features until E3, when we should see the first trailer and hear some of
the new features incoming, but along with the usual mix of “better
AI†and “improved realism†– both of which are exceptionally
hard to quantify – what should we expect?
Well, if you believe someone who has reviewed every FIFA game for the last six years running, FIFA 17 is going to put a lot more value on player pace again. Or, to quote Jack Arnott’s review of FIFA 16 on Eurogamer: “In FIFA 11, pace was overpowered. In FIFA 12, pace was nerfed. In FIFA 13, pace was overpowered. In FIFA 14, pace was nerfed. In FIFA 15, pace was overpowered.†To me, that’s personally bad news, as pace just ruined the Ultimate Team experience – every opponent was just a random collection of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyangs, Theo Walcotts and Loic Remys – but your mileage may vary.
More teams would seem an obvious way to go, as well. FIFA 16 promised over 650 teams, which is roughly 8% more than the previous two years. As I mentioned at the start of this, the Turkish second division and Israeli league would appear to be popular choices in a fairly unscientific poll.
Oh, and it looks like we won’t have Lionel Messi on the cover for the first time since 2012. According to L’Equipe, Messi is uncertain as to whether to extend his deal with EA. Cristiano Ronaldo and Neymar are both contracted to arch-rival Pro Evolution Soccer,
so the company may have to look further afield for their next title
star. Maybe they’ll go back to Wayne Rooney, who was on every cover
between 2005 to 2011.
I’m going to guess Tuesday 20 September 2016. We shall see. It’s worth remembering that last time around, people who subscribed to EA Access could get in a little early for 10 hours, so hopefully EA will do something similar with FIFA 17.
We will continue to update this with the latest FIFA 17 news as we get it.
READ NEXT: Using Big Data to discover the next Lionel Messi
Images: Julian Carvajal, Hector Alejandro, Marco Verch and Christopher Johnson used under Creative Commons
Posting to her Instagram account, the midfielder uploaded a photo of her face being scanned by a camera crew with the hashtag #fifa17, along with a wry comment that translates as "Rumoured that COD [Call of Duty] also wanted some of the pictures."
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Polls don't tend to work well when there are more than 70 individual choices. Considering that limitation, though, the results are surprisingly clear-cut with a whopping 2.1 million votes counted. The Israeli league currently leads the pack with 405,563 votes, closely followed by the Turkish PTT League (the second division of Turkish football) with 404,385 votes. The third tier of German football is in third, followed by the Egyptian and Hungarian leagues.
Public polls are obviously open to heavy gaming, and entirely dependent on who sees them (I remember a poll on a website I once worked on being inundated by BlackBerry fans, turning the results against popular public opinion), but it's interesting, nonetheless.
I adore FIFA, but it’s broadly a love that’s unrequited. My Xbox isn’t a fan, either, I’d imagine, as Ultimate Team seasons have a tendency to result in the mistreatment of gamepads. FIFA 17 will probably follow the same pattern.
Still, despite the fact that my crowning achievement in the franchise was briefly leading Alsville Rovers (yes, really) to an extremely brief period in Division Two in Ultimate Team, when all the good players were distracted by World Cup Mode, I remain unlikely to be able to resist its charms when FIFA 17 arrives in eight months' time.
So what can we expect in FIFA 17?
FIFA 17: Features
Last year’s footballing jamboree brought in a raft of new features aimed at making it more accessible and welcoming, with a training mode (showing which buttons to press in certain situations) and women's teams for the first time (just 12 of them to begin with, but it’s a start).Well, if you believe someone who has reviewed every FIFA game for the last six years running, FIFA 17 is going to put a lot more value on player pace again. Or, to quote Jack Arnott’s review of FIFA 16 on Eurogamer: “In FIFA 11, pace was overpowered. In FIFA 12, pace was nerfed. In FIFA 13, pace was overpowered. In FIFA 14, pace was nerfed. In FIFA 15, pace was overpowered.†To me, that’s personally bad news, as pace just ruined the Ultimate Team experience – every opponent was just a random collection of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyangs, Theo Walcotts and Loic Remys – but your mileage may vary.
More teams would seem an obvious way to go, as well. FIFA 16 promised over 650 teams, which is roughly 8% more than the previous two years. As I mentioned at the start of this, the Turkish second division and Israeli league would appear to be popular choices in a fairly unscientific poll.
FIFA 17: Release date
If there’s one thing we can say with pretty high confidence right now – unless someone at EA is reading this and wants to make me look bad – it’ll be released in September 2016. How can I be so sure? Well, take a look at the release dates for the past ten FIFA games and see if you can spot the trend:|
FIFA 07 |
27/09/06 |
|
FIFA 08 |
20/09/07 |
|
FIFA 09 |
03/10/08 |
|
FIFA 10 |
02/10/09 |
|
FIFA 11 |
01/10/10 |
|
FIFA 12 |
30/09/11 |
|
FIFA 13 |
28/09/12 |
|
FIFA 14 |
26/09/13 |
|
FIFA 15 |
26/09/14 |
|
FIFA 16 |
22/09/15 |
We will continue to update this with the latest FIFA 17 news as we get it.
READ NEXT: Using Big Data to discover the next Lionel Messi
Images: Julian Carvajal, Hector Alejandro, Marco Verch and Christopher Johnson used under Creative Commons
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