Image: EA Sports
Now, we know that the folks behind big AAA sports game releases — and especially yearly ones where they really have to scrape the barrel and make up new words like ‘TruMotion’ and things of this nature to keep us interested — like to engage the pre-release hype train. It’s part of life, it’s part of nature. It keeps the soul warm and the planet spinning.
However, speaking to Game Rant a few days ago (thanks, NintendoEverything), EA SPORTS FC 26 dev Andreas Wilsdorf has been rather unexpectedly verbose in his claims on just how nicely his latest football game is running on Nintendo’s new machine. To the point that it almost feels a little too good to be true, especially when considering how some of the game’s beta and show-floor demo players seem to be finding things.
During an interview about the game with line producer Wilsdorf and career mode design director Pete O’Donnell, Wilsdorf said:
“In general, the Switch 2 was really exciting. Being on the platform with FC this year, the performance is what really excites us. It is on parity, basically, with what we see on PS5 and Xbox. Again, it’s a [handheld] console, but the first time I played with it, I was really impressed. Then, we also saw it working on the simulation and the times it takes to simulate the season and so on, which was very, very close to what we saw in PlayStation and Xbox devkits. That’s really impressive.”
Now, of course, this is fantastic news on the face of things, but it doesn’t mesh with some of the real-world evidence that we’ve been presented with elsewhere. Indeed, there has been a beta of the game running on Switch and Switch 2 (we didn’t get a code, unfortunately), and players of that version have been reporting in on the game’s Reddit forum with their impressions:
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As you can see from this particular post, it seems as though the game hasn’t been impressing everyone, although it is impossible to 100% confirm that these people are actually playing the Switch 2 version, rather than the Switch 1 beta – there has been some confusion it seems, and elsewhere other early beta players have an entirely different take on the experience:
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Felix Sanchez, one of our intrepid video producers, got to go hands-on with the game at Gamescom recently and came away unimpressed after playing in docked mode. “It felt almost exactly like 25 on Switch,” he says. “Sure, it ran stable, but it’s still running at what seemed like 30fps and the graphics are quite a downgrade compared to other platforms.”
After years of disappointing ‘Legacy‘ versions of FIFA on Switch, EA finally delivered an up-to-date, feature-rich game with EA Sports FC 24, and we were hoping Switch 2’s power would open up possibilities for the series that weren’t possible on older Nintendo hardware. With just a few weeks to go, and as much as we want to believe it’s gonna be as good as Mr Wilsdorf says, the 30fps gameplay (which would be a disaster for many excited FC fans) and the expected excision of crossplay have got us interested to see how it turns out when the oven bell finally dings on September 26th. Or even sooner, if we get a demo.
Looking forward to FC 26 on Switch 2? Playing the beta? Make sure to let us know how it’s been!
[source gamerant.com, via nintendoeverything.com]
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PJ is a staff writer across Hookshot Media. He’s been playing video games pretty much nonstop since the early 1980s, which is ages ago. Favourite genres include RPGs, puzzle games and lovely big single player adventures of all kinds. The weirder the better.