Electronic Arts is showing off all its major upcoming games at the direct streaming version of its EA Play conference, which kicks off E3 2019, and that includes the first details on the highly anticipated FIFA 20. The FIFA series pulls in big numbers every year, which is why EA dedicated a full 30 minutes to talking about this year’s title. We got our first look at FIFA 20 gameplay, as well as something the team are calling “Football Intelligence.” This follows the reveal of the FIFA 20 release date before the event and the confirmation of the street-based Volta football as a focus.
EA has revealed that FIFA 20 will release on September 27. Given that all the recent FIFA games over the past few years have released in late September, this is hardly a surprise. It’s just before the holiday season, and long enough after team transfers are over so EA doesn’t have to worry about the game’s teams being out of date. It will also get an early release on September 19 with EA and Origin Access.
What do we know about the FIFA 20 gameplay?
As highlighted at EA Play, with FIFA 20 the team are attempting to address some of the problems players have had with previous games in the series, which the developer is now referring to as “Football Intelligence.” There is more of an emphasis on one-to-one attacking, manual defending, and more. The FIFA development team is especially focused on improving defending, with a larger emphasis on manual defending and a new manual tackling system, but the AI defending will be vastly improved too. 1v1 shot accuracy is being improved, as is accuracy for open goals, so there will be less cases of your players missing simple shots.
EA also wants to cut down on “superhuman” goalkeeper reactions, especially in 1v1 situations. Work is being done towards making the passing more realistic, with trickier passes made more believably difficult to perform, and dinked passes (which were in FIFA 19) now have to be performed manually. The team are also revamping the ball physics to make it more realistic.
FIFA 20 will release on Xbox One, PS4, PC, and Nintendo Switch.
