As football fans await for a new licenced FIFA game, the FIFA organization itself has announced a new partnership with none other than Konami.
FIFA’s licensing agreement with EA came to an end in 2022, meaning EA no longer makes FIFA football games. Technically, the series continues under the new moniker of EA Sports FC; it’s just no longer affiliated with FIFA. FIFA, meanwhile, confirmed it would partner with other publishers to make officially licensed games, but it took some time for anything to materialize.
On October 10, Konami announced it would be collaborating with FIFA. Considering Konami is responsible for the eFootball and Pro Evolution Soccer series of football sims, which was a rival of the FIFA games for a time, this is a rather ironic development. But does this mean Konami is going to start making the FIFA games?
Is Konami making the FIFA games?
Konami is not currently set to make FIFA games, but will partner with FIFA for its esports events.
So far, there’s nothing to indicate Konami has been chosen to develop new FIFA games. According to Konami’s press release, its FIFA partnership is only related to the FIFAe World Cup. This esports tournament originally made use of EA’s FIFA games, but that’s no longer the case.
Moving forward, the event will begin making use of Konami’s own eFootball game. eFootball launched in 2021 and has been receiving yearly updates with an annual rebranding. The eFootball 2025 update arrived in September 2024.
Two FIFAe World Cup competitions are scheduled to take place this year and will be using the console and mobile versions of Konami’s eFootball game. Qualifiers have begun being held, with 18 nations invited to be represented at the final events. Those nations are:
- Argentina
- Brazil
- Costa Rica
- England
- France
- India
- Indonesia
- Japan
- Korea Republic
- Malaysia
- Morocco
- Netherlands
- Poland
- Portugal
- Saudi Arabia
- Spain
- Thailand
- Turkey
“The objective of this collaboration is to further boost the joy of the global football community through esports. By allowing players to represent their nations through dedicated competitions, this initiative will take the connection with the community to a new level,” Konami said in a statement.
It’s unclear whether this foretells a larger partnership between Konami and FIFA. eFootball is designed to be updated annually and has recovered from its disastrous launch, with its player count multiplying several times over from its disastrous launch. Rebranding the game with the FIFA label could push it to the next level.
While eFootball is well-established at this point, this space is set to get crowded in the coming years.
2K Games is getting into the football space with the upcoming Lego football game titled Lego 2K Goal. Cristiano Ronaldo is also backing the UFL football game, which is directly targeting EA Sports’ spot atop the genre.
With 2024 ending in just a couple of months, FIFA is effectively guaranteed to go another year with an official game. That could change in 2025, though.