Recently, FIFA ended its decade-long partnership with EA Sports, a division of Electronic Arts that develops and publishes sports video games.
FIFA is the central governing body of international soccer and is in charge of organizing one of the most sporting tournaments across the globe – the world cup. A recent announcement revealed its plan to launch four new blockchain-based and Web 3.0 games.
The World Cup is a widely followed international sporting tournament and is held every four years. The previous version of the tournament was held in 2018 and this year, Qatar is all set to host it within the next 10 days. The launch of games by the organization is directed to engage and entertain a larger set of viewers ahead of the upcoming tournament.
EA has been in partnership with FIFA for about 30 years and was the sole body authorized for producing the annual “FIFA” games, one of the best gaming series currently ruling the market. The upcoming FIFA 23 is the last game as a result of their collaboration.
After the end of the collaboration, FIFA announced their plans to continue producing the games independently and the new plans unveil their strategy to introduce Web 3.0 and blockchain-based games.
As per the announcement, the Web 3 integrated games are the organization’s step in advancing toward enhanced technology. The games would be made available to play around the tournament and each of the four has distinctive features.
The first blockchain-based game is named “AI League” which is a 4 versus 4 soccer game. The players here can manage their respective teams of AI characters and utilize them for playing matches against each other. The second game is named “Matchday”, which is a social prediction game based on soccer cards. The players here can raise their stakes on certain teams and compete to get their predictions right.
Phygtl being the third on the list is an engagement mobile application, where the fans can join forces to co-create the global first fan-generated digital reward. The fourth one is being developed in integration with the popular blockchain-based metaverse Upland, which will facilitate fans to collect FIFA World Cup digital assets.
The blockchain-based games have been highly dominating the market in recent times, about 48% of blockchain activity accounts for blockchain gaming as reported by Todayq.