Oct 2, 2007
Joe Booth, FIFA 08 (PS3, Xbox 360) Lead Producer
Creating and maintaining our FIFA 08 database is an enormous undertaking that requires coordinating researchers all over the world and organizing their information. This year FIFA 08 will has 30 leagues, more than 570 teams and more than 15,000 players – this represents more leagues, teams and players than all other EA SPORTS games combined.
In addition, a lot of player transfers happen during the first transfer window. This takes place right when we are finalising our game, so our database researchers work round the clock during this period to make sure we capture every single transfer. Last year in FIFA 07 we provided two downloadable database updates: one in September and another one in February, following the closure of the transfer windows.
This was the first time EA SPORTS has been able to update the content of one of its sports titles inthe middle of the season and this new approach has enabled us to make a more realistic playing game. To give you some numbers: between September 2006 and February 2007, there were 75,000 player database updates and more than 4,300 transfers in the database.
