Moore: FIFA franchise will eventually evolve into a disc-less franchise

EA Sports' Peter Moore has believes the FIFA franchise will eventually become less-focused on disc-basded releases and become more of a persistent online series.

Speaking with MCV, Moore said  the series already has an online only world, via FIFA Superstars and its 4.3 million  monthly users, but the main series will start to evolve on a more continuous basis.

"Football for most of us is pretty constant," said Moore. "We need to provide that persistent world, maybe sometimes powered by discs, maybe on social networks, or the cloud or whatever. That’s’ the team’s vision, that no matter where you are or what you’re using, there’s a FIFA experience to be had, it all links together, it lifts your level up and identifies your status.

“Personally I still think there’ll be discs five years from now. But generally yes, of course, I think there will come a time when FIFA is less a disc that you wait for in late September/early October, and more something that we provide 365 days a year.

“In a few years time I expect to have less of a team developing and as many if not more doing live operations.”

According to Moore, merging the series into an online-based mechanic has already started, although the firm is taking "baby steps" at the moment towards "persistence and presence for a full FIFA eco system".

"The business model’s simple: you accept that the vast majority of users will never pay you a penny and you learn to be cool with that," he said. "Plus you get people like me who want deeper engagement, and can’t sit still waiting for their three daily match credits or whatever, so we pay to accelerate our gameplay and create better teams, and that’s nice but it’s not really the point.

"What you are now starting to see is some linkage between FIFA Superstars and unlocking some features in FIFA 11."

FIFA 11 is out now, and the title moved 2.6 million units during its opening weekend in the US and Europe.