Next-gen FIFA 07 only on Xbox 360

Two years in the making, and the biggest investment Electronic Arts has ever committed to the art of recreating sport in a videogame. The all-new EA SPORTS engine was unveiled today at the Leipzig Games Convention, and will make its debut in FIFA 07… exclusively on Xbox 360.

“This engine is the most sophisticated sports technology we’ve ever produced,” said Electronic Arts’ Andrew Wilson, Senior Producer for FIFA 07, “it gives us the ability to transform football as it is played today but more importantly, it is a dynamic technology that promises to deliver new innovations for years to come.”

EA is billing FIFA 07 as “the first real next-gen football experience”, using state-of-the-art technology to transform the game. The FIFA revolution takes place on many levels: visually, responsively and above all realistically like never before. Although we’ve grown accustomed to more lifelike presentations year on year from EA the physics-based, data-driven technology in the new engine allows for much more.

In terms of how this will look, players can now be recognisable by their movement on the pitch. All players feature authentic athletic motion, but players will also be instantly identifiable according to their actions on and off the ball. According to EA this is all driven by individual attributes – a combination of accurate data, physical characteristics and traits.

For the gamer, this new engine brings an unprecedented level of responsiveness, owing to real-time calculations of human biomechanics. Of course this also benefits the AI-controlled players, who perform much more realistically based on their ‘football brain’ – a new decision-making layer built into the game engine. “Essentially our software engineers are writing human decision-making code,” said the Producer of FIFA 07 on the Xbox 360, Hugues Ricour. Holy cow!

New ball physics, ahem, ‘round off’ the list of gameplay features in FIFA 07. In previous iterations of FIFA the ball has responded based only on the actions of the players, in the next-gen version the ball has its own independent physics. This means that every touch you take will feel unique, making great goals extra special.

Lastly, the online aspects of FIFA 07 are to die for: dubbed “a complete media package” by EA, with live results, podcasts and a news ticker constantly updated.

FIFA 07 for Xbox 360 is due for release this coming autumn in Europe.