FIFA 13's EA Sports Football Club setup includes a new feature this year called Match Day, FIFA executive producer David Rutter announced at Electronic Arts' Gamescom 2012 press conference today.
FIFA 13's EA Sports Football Club setup includes a new feature this year called Match Day, FIFA executive producer David Rutter announced at Electronic Arts' Gamescom 2012 press conference today.
Match Day offers "the deepest, most meaningful integration of video games and the real world, ever," according to Rutter. It allows players to receive updates about the real-world goings-on of the world's top soccer teams — news such as injuries and suspensions — through in-game commentary. And real-life player performance will now have an impact on in-game attributes: if Lionel Messi is tearing it up for Barça, he'll play better in FIFA 13. Match Day will also highlight the biggest real-life games of the week, so FIFA players can play out the matches themselves.
Rutter also announced that the FIFA 13 demo will be available on September 11th for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC, and that it will include Match Day.
Finally, EA debuted a new trailer, embedded below. It begins with Messi dancing around a rainy pitch to show off the ways in which weather affects a player's control of the ball. One of the major new gameplay features this year, First Touch Control, governs the variables in corralling a loose ball, such as weather and nearby defenders. You'll also see off-ball jostling between players, an addition to the real-time physics engine introduced last year, and the revamped free kick setup.
FIFA 13 is due out on September 25th in North America, and on September 28th in Europe, for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii U, PC, Mac, Vita, 3DS, Wii, PSP, PS2, and iOS.
Update: We've added a gallery of FIFA 13 screenshots from Gamescom below the video.