I wonder if they’ve figured out that because they just release essentially the same game every year (for this franchise and other sports franchises like FIFA) with different content, it’ll be cheaper for them to just basically sell a patch?
Just read the article to confirm - yup, it’s a paid “expansion”. God, that’s so funny.
They litterally did 4 years of re-releasing the exact same FIFA on Switch with only a roster update, just slapping a “legacy edition” on them for good measure. If it’s the same game, by comparison, making it a DLC of the previous edition is slightly more honest.
Annual sports game editions are just a wet dream a marketing genius had back in the 90s. A shame that it must still work on a significant part of their audience.
Initially it made a lot of sense though. The differences between each fifa version between the first one and 2003 were massive with each iteration. But as the graphics got better and better and the gameplay was more or less settled, it became less sensible to have a new edition each year. After fifa 2003 there were noticeably less differences between the iterations.
That cycle was artificially squeezed into one year though.
If we’re staying in the area of games that don’t rely on story or lots of new manually crafted environments, a game like, say, SimCity could have had a minor update and be released slightly better every year. That didn’t happen, it got 3 games in ten years despite being quite popular.
2026 is a new regulations year for F1 so the cars are very different, racing rules are different, there’s even an 11th team joining the fray. Yearly sports game expansions instead of whole new games is the obvious choice but for F1 specifically, this seems like the worst possible year to switch?
I feel like this is also the best time to do this.
F1 25 is not great, the game needs to be sorted out and revamped for it to prosper again in my opinion. The best time for them to have done this was last year, so they could come out swinging for 2026.
But I think coming out next year with a new game that has had time for the 2026 cars to be worked on and settled in is a good choice as well. They just need to get their shit together and put out a good game… Which for racing games seems to be almost impossible
Really don’t quite get why these sports games need a ‘new’ version each year anyway. All they really used to change were driver line-ups and some minute details about how cars handled on controllers. If you were to play with a wheel you’d not have noticed much difference since F1 2018 but they’ll expect you to buy it again and again.
Just sell the game at 70, yearly content updates at 20 and stop pretending you’re actually doing anything about issues in the game.
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I wonder if they’ve figured out that because they just release essentially the same game every year (for this franchise and other sports franchises like FIFA) with different content, it’ll be cheaper for them to just basically sell a patch?
Just read the article to confirm - yup, it’s a paid “expansion”. God, that’s so funny.
They litterally did 4 years of re-releasing the exact same FIFA on Switch with only a roster update, just slapping a “legacy edition” on them for good measure. If it’s the same game, by comparison, making it a DLC of the previous edition is slightly more honest.
Annual sports game editions are just a wet dream a marketing genius had back in the 90s. A shame that it must still work on a significant part of their audience.
Initially it made a lot of sense though. The differences between each fifa version between the first one and 2003 were massive with each iteration. But as the graphics got better and better and the gameplay was more or less settled, it became less sensible to have a new edition each year. After fifa 2003 there were noticeably less differences between the iterations.
That cycle was artificially squeezed into one year though.
If we’re staying in the area of games that don’t rely on story or lots of new manually crafted environments, a game like, say, SimCity could have had a minor update and be released slightly better every year. That didn’t happen, it got 3 games in ten years despite being quite popular.
Releasing a new game every 5 years with paid expansion every year is exactly what they should be doing.
2026 is a new regulations year for F1 so the cars are very different, racing rules are different, there’s even an 11th team joining the fray. Yearly sports game expansions instead of whole new games is the obvious choice but for F1 specifically, this seems like the worst possible year to switch?
I feel like this is also the best time to do this.
F1 25 is not great, the game needs to be sorted out and revamped for it to prosper again in my opinion. The best time for them to have done this was last year, so they could come out swinging for 2026.
But I think coming out next year with a new game that has had time for the 2026 cars to be worked on and settled in is a good choice as well. They just need to get their shit together and put out a good game… Which for racing games seems to be almost impossible
But it also means that 2025 most likely will not get patches anymore.
All of those changes are minor as far as a game goes on the backend. They aren’t building brand new mechanics for these cars year after year.
Really don’t quite get why these sports games need a ‘new’ version each year anyway. All they really used to change were driver line-ups and some minute details about how cars handled on controllers. If you were to play with a wheel you’d not have noticed much difference since F1 2018 but they’ll expect you to buy it again and again.
Just sell the game at 70, yearly content updates at 20 and stop pretending you’re actually doing anything about issues in the game.
Fuck EA
Also fuck F1.
It’s more like fuck the FIA then F1.
With the significant rule changes I can see why they would do it this way.