It looks like EA FC 24 might actually have a true competitor on their hands, with STRIKERZ INC revealing that over one million players jumped onto the pitch for UFL‘s first open beta weekend.
According to STRIKERZ, 1,320,000 players downloaded the beta and created their club, with over 5.5 million minutes played and 9,986,206 goals scored—not bad for UFL‘s first public outing. It’s no surprise that the football-mad nations of the United Kingdom, Brazil, and Germany led the way in player numbers, with the United States and France filling out the top five.
It also should come as a shock that the most popular player in the beta was UFL‘s frontman Cristiano Ronaldo. Truthfully, it was never going to be anyone else.
As for the beta itself, reviews have been pretty positive. The Ultimate Team-style game is definitely not as polished as EA FC 24, but it definitely feels nice to play, and is a solid foundation for STRIKERZ to build on. While the numbers are impressive for one weekend, it’s worth remembering that EA Sports’ soccer offering reportedly logged 11.3 million users in its first week, so there’s a long way to go to reign in EA FC.
Still, it’s nice to see some actual competition in the football market. Konami’s decision to kill the Pro Evolution Soccer series and replace it with eFootball essentially killed all of its momentum, leaving FIFA and then EA FC to become the undisputed king of the genre.
With UFL now making waves, and a rumored FIFA game developed by 2K, we might finally have a fight on our hands for the top spot, and the competition may push EA Sports to make major improvements to their franchise.
