EA Sports has already decided on a new name for its hugely popular FIFA series of football games, according to a new report.
Unless you've been living under a rock (or you just don't care about football, which is also fine), it's been rumoured for a while now that EA Sports is looking to move away from the FIFA brand and end its partnership with the football organisation.
Last October reports emerged that claimed negotiations between EA Sports and FIFA had "hit a wall". Earlier this year, EA said that the FIFA name was, if anything, holding back its football games. I suspect negotiations didn't get past that wall.
Take a look at some of the strangest moments in FIFA below!
"As we've looked to the future we want to grow the franchise, and ironically the FIFA license has actually been an impediment to that," EA CEO Andrew Wilson said. "Our players tell us they want more cultural and commercial brands relevant to them in their markets, more deeply embedded in the game [...] brands like Nike. But because FIFA has a relationship with Adidas, we are not able to do that.
"Our players are telling us they want us to move really quick: 'we want you guys doing stuff fast'. And in order to do that, we need a level of freedom to be truly creative, innovative and experiment in the marketplace."
At this point it's clear that the big FIFA rebrand is a question of when, not if. According to a new report from VentureBeat's Jeff Grubb, EA Sports has finally settled on the new name for its rebranded football franchise. Sources close to EA have confirmed to the reporter that the recently discovered trademark of "EA Sports FC" is the name they'll be going with.
I wish I had more of an opinion on this for you, but I really don't. At least they didn't think calling it eFootball would be a good idea, I guess.
