By RYAN TOLMICH
For the first time ever, players such as Abby Wambach, Alex Morgan and Sydney Leroux will be in the game.
EA Sports announced Thursday that the U.S. Women’s National Team will be among 12 women’s national teams included in the upcoming FIFA 16 video game. The USWNT will be joined by Germany, France, Sweden, England, Brazil, Canada, Australia, Spain, China, Italy and Mexico as playable teams, marking the first time that gamers will be able to use women’s teams in the popular FIFA series.
Each team will be playable in both online and offline gameplay, but will only be playable against other women’s teams.
The announcement comes just over a week before the kick off of the Women’s World Cup, which is set to run from June 6 to July 5.
Have a look at a trailer for the new feature below:
What do you think about women’s national teams being made playable in FIFA? Does this make you want to get FIFA 16 even more? Wishing there were more than 12 teams?
Share your thoughts below.
I wonder how big of a feature this is to FIFA’s core audience. In the end of the day new features are for your consumer or to attract new consumers, not to just make for the hell of it.
Still praying/hoping we hear about UEFA licenses.
This is good news for women’s soccer. Pity it had to come in the midst of the FIFA debacle.
But will you be able to pay dudes versus chicks or will it be like the WWE games where you can only play diva v diva.
They’ve specified you can only play ladies vs. ladies.
Someone will figure out a custom way to do it though…
That moment when you 3-0 some Barcelona abusing kid with the USWNT…
lol, sounds like they will lock it to women vs women tho
Long overdue, but really excited to play with the USWNT and the other women’s teams. Hopefully they’ll include more men’s national teams too. I. E. Ghana, Costa Rica, etc.
Really cool! I’m glad my daughter will grow up with this option. She was barely 3 when she started recognizing/verbalizing gender stereotypes in sports (Daddy, I’m the only girl; I look like a boy (in soccer uniform); boys play (sports), girls cheer.) I have to take her to more female sporting events, but things like this help. Little minds are impressionable.
In hindsight, what took so long.
My 8-year old daughter just complained about not having that option three days ago. I think this is a great addition.
I must say this is both overdue and a great milestone for women’s soccer and soccer in general. Sad you can only play vs women’s teams. I’d love to use the Women’s team in a simulated mens WC to see if the USWNT could have made it farther than the USMNT, lol
I am a big supporter of the USMNT for 20 years (before it was a thing) and watch a lot of high level women’s college soccer (ACC). The women’s team IS NOT better than the men’s team. No way they would advance further than the USMNT.
However, some guy on this board is talking like they are equivalent to a typical high school boys team. Nope! Those teams might be bigger and stronger, but the women’s team is more skilled. They are essentially equivalent to probably the U17/18 USMNT and that is not a typical high school team.
That guy Paul was talking how local boys teams beat them. Did it ever damn upon them that they were not really trying to win. My high school varsity team lost in the state championship game once and got the state quarter final another year in NY. We routinely lost to the JV team in practice. We tried, but we also weren’t trying to do anything but try formations and scrimmage. I played with a couple elite club female players and girls who played in the acc who would have OWNED a couple guys I played with even if those guys were bigger and faster. I watched Duke play UNC when I was a student and remembered thinking that those girls were better than anyone I played with or against in high school except for those of us who played elite club ball.2
Is this the first time women athletes have been in a video game? That seems kinda awesome.
Next thing you know, they’ll be holding down full time jobs and making as much as a man…wearing pants and not riding side-saddle…voicing opinions and influencing others…This affront to Manhood must be stopped.
Chauvinist sentiment brought to you be Axe Body Spray. Axe – when you want to hit a woman but can’t, you can at least assault her olfactory sense.
lolz
There were female tennis stars in the Top Spin series. There were some female golfers in one of EA’s Tiger Woods games. I’m sure there have been others, but I’m drawing a blank.
Of course you’re forgetting the very life-like women (and their bouncing breasts), of the Dead or Alive Volleyball games of the late 90s/early 2000s: A.K.A. the most sexist games ever created within one of the most sexist industries in history.
I guess I was referring to actual athletes being in these games. Or, at least, the characters in the game are modeled after their real-life counterparts.
There was Mia Hamm Soccer on the N64, but that game was terrible. I hope they eventually include legends characters like Mia Hamm, Michelle Akers, and Tiffeny Milbrett in the game and it’d be insane if they have FUT cards for them. RB Wambach anyone?
Back in the day, EA sports included about 16 womens teams in NCAA March Madness. I don’t remember the version but it was pre-Playstation 3. Hell, it may have even been PS 1 but they were there. – Ah hell I just googled it and it was March Madness 1998.
‘Bout damn time! Now I can finally see how Wambach does on a men’s team. I feel like she’d be a legit threat in a lower-tier men’s league.
You aren’t serious, are you? She would do well on a boys high school team – after that, I don’t think so. How do I know? Before the women’s World Cup we hosted, the Chinese (considered at the time to be the second best) were playing their group opener in my neck of the woods, and prepped by playing three local boys high school teams. Their record against the high school kids was 1-1-1.
I am serious, and your anecdotal evidence is weak. Wambach is 5′ 11″, 179 lbs. She’s a beast. She’s scored something like 180 goals for the USWNT. She probably couldn’t hack it in an upper division men’s league, but I would absolutely bet real money she could score goals in USL or an equivalent league.
Any USL team would win the Women’s World Cup with 9 players.
It’s apples and oranges. And there’s no need whatsoever to mix the categories
The golden gen girls of 99 were beaten handily by the boys U-17 before World Cup 99. Don’t think they’ve advanced that much further.
Did you ever wonder why tactics are so much easier to see in a women’s game than a men’s game?
Hint, speed of play and speed of players. Even Morgan would look slow against adult male defenders, at any professional level.
That’s not why…. The tactics are like that because US has title IX and a lot more large physical players than the competition historically, in other countries the pool of players is smaller and countries are smaller so they don’t have as many athletically gifted players which allows the US to dominate them physically. Though that’s changed to some degree in recent years. Not all womens teams play like the US not even all womens teams in the US play like that.
That being said Wamach is terrible and shouldn’t even be on the team anymore. She is the worst forward on the team, the worst player actually. And, the USWNT is reputed to train against the U-16 USMNT and get their asses beat, though I still find that hard to believe.
And as for the weak anecdotal evidence, the high schoolers across the board were faster. The Chinese women were more skilled and tactically mature. High school boys get faster as they continue to grow. Wambach would have like zero impact on a college men’s team.
https://andagain.websitetoolbox.com/post/uswnt-no-match-for-so-cal-boys-odp-3256939
Why not recreae the entire tournament within the game? Surely it will not take much.
EA will never be able to get the license to have Japan’s teams. Those are (practically) permanently owned by Konami.
Though I wonder that now that Konami is only going to make mobile games if that license will lapse.
But Japan is on the 2014 World Cup game? I just know that I get worked by them when I try qualifying through Asia using East Timor.
So that’s why Japan’s not in it? Not having the reigning World Cup holders seems not great.
Yeah, it’s really strange. Konami basically owns the rights to only the Japanese national teams and the Brazilian domestic league.
I saw this on their Twitter feed. Speaking of which, EA Sports/FIFA has to have the most juvenile group of followers I’ve ever seen. Every time they post anything, the amount of trash you’ll read in the replies is astounding.
that’s the twittersphere in general.
that’s the internet! idiots like to hide behind computers