Thanks to the success of the FIFA series of video games from EA Sports, millions of people around the world can take charge of their favorite players and try to score some goals. But now a new contender is set to arrive on the scene soon. Will the launch of the UFL game change the market?
What Do We Know About UFL?
With no confirmed release date yet, we only know that this new game will be out at some point in 2022. It will be made available for the PlayStation 4 and 5, as well as for the Xbox One and Series X/S. Strikerz Inc. is the name of the company that will be publishing UFL, and they gave the world the first preview of the gameplay in the trailer shown at Gamescom in August 2021.
The creators say that they’ve been working on this game since 2016, using the Unreal Engine. One of the keys to the success of the FIFA games is the huge team of contributors who let them assess the rating for each player included. The approach taken by the developers of UFL in this respect is to team up with InStat, which is a company that carries out sports performance analysis and will feed them the statistics that they need.
A range of clubs has already been announced as being licensed by the game, meaning that players can use their official kit. They include West Ham, Celtic, Monaco and Besiktas, with Sporting Lisbon added to the list now too. Cristiano Ronaldo has appeared in advertising as the key image of the game, while Kevin De Bruyne and Romelu Lukaku are other major stars playing a part in it.
How Could It Change the Market?
The first important difference from FIFA is that UFL will be free to play, with gamers simply needing to download the software and then start playing against others online. The free to play model also ensures that people will be matched against others of a similar level rather than running the risk of losing heavily to expert players in their first games.
So far, the limited amount of detail we’ve seen in the trailer suggests that you just need to build your own team from a set of stars, rather than building up the whole football club by getting involved in all of the different aspects of running it.
The different versions of FIFA have become so wildly popular that the FIFA eWorld Cup has been introduced to give the best players the chance to show their skills on the big stage. This game has also become one of the popular eSports as fans look to use their knowledge of the top players to follow this exciting sport.
UFL could be added to popular esports sites if it takes off as expected, with users able to follow the big games. It’s worth noting that the best online sportsbook software allows for a fully customizable experience every day. Over 65 sports are covered on the most powerful platforms, so adding UFL quickly and efficiently should certainly be plausible.
A number of pro football clubs have used games such as Football Manager as a real-life scouting tool in the past, helping them to locate promising new talent more easily. It’s yet to be seen whether the statistics on UFL will be advanced and comprehensive enough to allow this, but it could at least give fans a different insight into players from other leagues.
So far, the UFL game looks like it should be a success by offering something different, but we’ll need to wait a bit longer to find out for sure.
