After revealing the cover art for the upcoming EA Sports FC 24 earlier this week (which did not make a particularly good impression on PC Gamer's resident football fan Rich Stanton, who said it featured "the most jankass footballer faces you've ever seen"), Electronic Arts has now shared the first trailer for the game, and revealed that it will be out on September 29—or a whole week earlier, if you spring for the ultimate edition.
As Electronic Arts' very first post-FIFA football game, EA Sports FC 24 is a very big deal: The FIFA series has been the company's most reliable cash cow for years. That's why EA really needs to get it right, and from that perspective you can see why it opted for the "group photo" approach to the cover art: The diversity of players, teams, and leagues is clearly intended to emphasize that the name may have changed, but the gang's all here.
The new trailer takes a similar all-in approach, and the not-universally-thrilled reaction in the YouTube comments is comparably mixed. "EA never disappoints when it comes to disappointing us," several users wrote. Another replied, "For people who are scared of any change whatsoever, don't worry, EA's got your back!" Many commenters criticized the absence of gameplay in what is ostensibly a gameplay trailer, although several noted that there is actually gameplay to be seen in the video, from 1:19 to 1:21. Sarcasm notwithstanding, they're not wrong.
For the record, I don't think bad cover art or a weak trailer—or even a less-than-stellar game release—are going to sink EA's massive football franchise. My expectation is that the sheer momentum of 30 years of FIFA games gives it a little bit of room to correct course before fans throw up their hands in earnest in 2025 or ‘26.
Still, with so much at stake, it strikes me as a little odd that all the pre-release hype has come off as kinda half-assed so far. You can’t guarantee how people will react to things, and the internet is a famously fickle place, but I’m just not seeing the attention to detail that I would’ve expected. Instead, it comes off to me as EA treating it like just another annual addition to an old, reliable franchise.
EA Sports FC 24 will be available for PC on Steam and the Epic Games Store, and through the EA Play Pro subscription service. The standard edition will be available on September 29, but the Ultimate and EA Play Pro editions will go live on September 22.
