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- FIFA launch FIFA World 2.0
FIFA launch FIFA World 2.0
+ Call of Duty comes to Game Pass & Gamefam launch $5m Creator Fund
Joe Condon
June 04, 2024
Welcome back to Edition #12 of The SEG3 Report.
The dozen is up, and today’s edition is crammed full of goodies, with FIFA launching its second iteration of FIFA World on Roblox, Microsoft bringing Call of Duty onto its Game Pass, and Gamefam launching a Creator Fund.
So, here’s what you need to know this week:
Let’s get into it…
US Soccer & DFB are first to join FIFA World 2.0
FIFA have launched FIFA World 2.0, providing an interactive environment for all 211 of its member associations to build experiences, experiment and interact with a Gen Z/A audience. US Soccer & DFB are the first two National Associations to dive in.
Why you should care?
US Soccer & the DFB being first to build their experiences within FIFA World shouldn’t be a surprise given they will be the next two hosts of major football tournaments. The German FA slightly sooner than US Soccer mind…
With this being the second outing of FIFA World, with 1.0 launched prior to the Qatar World Cup, what’s new and newsworthy here?
Three things:
The move to evergreen
Bringing National Association’s into the experience
Sponsor integration
1) The move to evergreen
FIFA World 2.0 will be moving away from being a tournament specific experience, and instead aiming to become evergreen, which I feel is the right move to have a constant presence, but is still undoubtedly a big commitment. FIFA have smartly opted for a tycoon-style game, which having spent many an hour playing Rollercoaster Tycoon, I can attest to the fact that many an hour can be sunk into progressing your world.
It doesn’t detract from the fact that liveops is time consuming, and continually updating and adding new challenges into a game is not a scenario that many (any?) sports organisations have ever found themselves in pre-UGC gaming, so you’d imagine this will be a test and learn approach to find what game mechanics are sticky.
With it being quite time consuming, it’s lucky there are 211 members that could potentially help FIFA out…
2) Bringing National Assocation’s (NA’s) into the mix
As much as the NA’s may share the liveops/strategy burden with FIFA, it seems like a fair trade off given it would’ve been unlikely that the majority of NA’s would dive into Roblox without the support of their international federation.
Development can be expensive, and having content that brings a global audience as an NA can inherently be tricky. So having a one-stop shop, with localised experiences for each NA that are accessible through portals, is a smart way to bring more personalised experience for fans to the generic experience.
3) Sponsor Integration
US Soccer Vice President of Business Ventures, Ross Moses said ‘Through the platform, U.S. Soccer’s new and existing commercial partners will be able to capitalize on organic integration opportunities within U.S. Soccer’s virtual clubhouse as well as the broader U.S. Soccer campus’.
Sports has and always will be a draw to sponsors given its access to a loyal, global fanbase. But covid accelerated the shift in preference towards engaging/activating digitally rather than physically, so FIFA World will undoubtedly unlock new digital inventory and activation opportunities for current partners, and attract potential new partners for both FIFA and the NA’s.
It’s an exciting launch which will also coincide with some other sports focused experiences, like UEFA & Toikido’s experience which we covered in Edition #10, so it’ll be interesting to see where fans choose to spend their time.
And of course, if you’d like to get the low-down on FIFA’s digital, gaming & emerging tech strategy, you might want to keep an eye on the SEG3 socials this week for a SEG3 London update… 👀
On that note…
Away for the holidays and miss the super early bird passes for SEG3 London last Friday?
Use the code REWIND to get Super Early Bird pricing until Friday 7th June.
Don’t miss the opportunity to join 100’s of global leaders across sports, entertainment, gaming & emerging technology in just over 3 weeks time on June 27-28.
Call of Duty comes to Microsoft’s Game Pass
"Call of Duty: Black Ops 6" will be available on Xbox’s Game Pass from its launch day, in quite a big addition to Microsoft's subscription service.
Why it matters?
I suppose this may have been inevitable after Activision’s acquisition…
But it’s a BIG title shifting to a subscription, in what I’m sure is a calculated gamble from Microsoft to try and drive the franchise's loyal audience to sign-up there.
It raises a few questions however:
Will Microsoft look to continue acquiring franchises to bring under Game Pass?
If so, would these franchises be exclusively locked in, or will they still be able to distribute the game elsewhere?
Can subscriptions outweigh the revenues that traditional game sales have previously accrued?
The trickiness with subscriptions, as we all know with entertainment subscriptions i.e. Netflix, is that there is an expectation of ongoing content/access, so for Microsoft to be able to keep its Game Pass members satisfied, they’re going to need to bring new franchises onto the service for the consumer to feel like they’re getting a good value exchange and stop churn.
Which would be especially hard to stop if those franchises/games were readily available elsewhere too…
As I said, I’m sure it’s a calculated risk, but with Activision typically selling more than 20 million copies of Call of Duty at around $70 each, that’s a lot of game passes to be sold for the economics to stack up.
It remains to be seen whether Microsoft will hike its prices up to try and lower the number of subscriptions they need for this to be feasible, but I applaud them for trying a different commercial model at a time where the games industry is going through a lot of change.
Gamefam launches Creator Fund
Game Development Studio Gamefam launch a $5 million fund to support the next generation of UGC Games.
Why is this important?
One of the joys of UGC gaming is that tools are readily available for anyone to build, which means that any creator can theoretically build a hit-game.
It is however much more likely that with some funding behind a burgeoning game that is already attracting players, it can scale into one of the top games on the platform.
With the space being relatively nascent, there are a lot of acquisitions of games by some of the bigger players (think Voldex acquiring Ultimate Football in a multi-million dollar deal).
It looks like its still to be confirmed whether the fund is no-strings attached (i.e. a grant), or whether it would be an investment from Gamefam into the game. Either way, it’s a fantastic initiative that is sure to supercharge a number of creators, with guidance on:
Game Design Advice & Roadmap Planning
Monetization
Brand Partnerships
Access to Gamefam Assets
Marketing & Influencers
Gamefam’s Analytics Solutions
If you think you fit the bill, then check out the application process here.
In other news…
A quick round-up of other stories we found interesting this week!
Working on anything cool, or have a press release you would like us to cover? Send it in for the chance for it to be covered in next week’s edition!