FIFA 13 Becomes Fastest Selling Sports Game in History

by pastapadre
Posted October 4th, 2012 at 9:30 am

For the third straight year EA Sports has broken their own record to deliver the biggest sports game launch of all-time. Beginning with FIFA 11 (2.6 million) and topped by FIFA 12 (3.2 million) those worldwide sales records have now been shattered by FIFA 13.

An astonishing 4.5 million copies of FIFA 13 have been sold in the first 5 days on the market. That makes it the biggest videogame launch of the year and the fastest selling sports title ever.

The news started rolling in quickly that the game was surging year-over-year with North America first to report as up 42% and then the UK where it became the first non-Call of Duty title to ever top 1 million copies in its first week with 1.23 million in just 2 days.

September 30 represented the busiest day of online play in EA history with more than 800K people on at the same time. Over 66 million online games of FIFA 13 have already been played.

Tags: latest news, sales analysis

Keith.

Based on EA’s “internal estimates.” LoL
- Keith.
  
  LoL — it gets even funnier:
  
  “FIFA Fake-Out: EA Sells Last Year’s Soccer Game as New”
  
  http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2012/10/fifa-13-wii/
  - Keith.
    
    This is from the article that originally brought this situation to light:
    
    “We realise this article is going to annoy our friends at EA, but we felt duty bound to make it obvious that FIFA 13 is identical to FIFA 12 other than a squad and kit update. This is something that needs to be highlighted, because while it would be easy to pass it off and say “meh, it’s just the Wii version”, the fact remains that this game does still sell relatively well. This isn’t guesswork – as journalists we receive confidential sales figures and though we’re legally bound not to reveal those figures, we can at least say with confidence that FIFA 12 did pretty well for a Wii game this close to the console’s death.
    
    “Indeed, the fact it appears regularly in the Wii top ten (as can be seen by our weekly chart stories) shows that while it may not be selling in the millions like its Xbox 360 and PS3 cousins the game still has a solid audience, an audience that may well be looking to buy FIFA 13 on Wii expecting something other than a roster update (which would be free on other consoles but is £30 here).”
    http://www.nintendo-gamer.net/2012/09/27/fifa-13-wii-vs-fifa-12-wii-the-shocking-truth/3/
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=726049039 Ian S Ximinies

SMH would it have been sooo hard to just sell DLC with updated rosters and uniforms for the Wii…i dont hate ea but shady things like this is just pathetic…couldnt just stick an update in the nintendo store somewhere
- mcmax3000
  
  They likely couldn’t, as last year’s game would’ve had to have been built with that in mind.
  
  On other consoles, they probably could do something like that as they could patch the game, but since the Wii lacks the ability to be patched, I doubt it would work.
…

sports GOTY, no doubt.. not even a competition.
- Keith.
  
  Have only played Fifa’s demo (which is hard for me to judge since I know next to nothing about soccer), but pretty hard to top The Show or NBA2k, IMHO. I’m sure you’d get some argument from NHL fans as well.
  - …
    
    hard to top 2k12.5? I doubt that. The Show is cool but the excitement wears off. Fifa is a title you can play for 2 installments and almost never get bored.
    
    If we’re talking strictly from an american standpoint, I’m sure 2k13 by a landslide but on an international level? FIFA, and it really is no contest.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000220160801 Mike Davis

well deserved, awesome game.
WegetIt

It has everything to do with soccers unmatched international popular, and little to do with the quality of the game. Im not sure why this gets reported every year like its a shock or something.
- http://twitter.com/philsites Phil Sites
  
  I think the reports carry more shock value in the states because of the country’s history as a footy-indifferent nation. The rapidly increading U.S. sales numbers are really putting the FIFA game into uncharted territory now – it was a market they really couldn’t count on before. People are fast realizing how addicting it is to play regardless if you love the sport in real life…
  - Keith.
    
    Vgchartz has 1st week sales numbers in the US as being 285,546 (360) and 263,389 (PS3), which is good for soccer I guess but hardly blockbuster-type sales figures.
MoneyMayweather

If madden 2004 were released in this day and age it would have sold 10 million in the first month no doubt in my mind.