FIFA is coming back as a Netflix exclusive. I mean, not really FIFA per se. That franchise is now called EA Sports FC after soccer’s international governing body failed to get EA to keep paying for the licensing rights. This new FIFA, which will only be playable on the Netflix app, will likely be something very different. FIFA and Netflix promise it’s coming next year in time for the 2026 World Cup, but as of right now it’s not even really clear who’s actually going to develop this new soccer game.
Yesterday’s press release points to Delphi Interactive as the publisher and developer. It’s only real credit up to this point is getting the licensing rights to James Bond for IO Interactive’s upcoming 007 First Light game. The Beverly Hills-based outfit bills itself as building “AAA games based on the most desirable IP franchises in the world,” but only has 14 people associated with the company on LinkedIn.
One of those is CEO
So who at Delphi actually knows about games? Well, the company did hire Nordisk Games founder Mikkel Weider, who Daugaard previously lauded for having “essentially blitz-scaled Nordisk Games from one employee to 1,300 in just a few years.” Is that what’s going on here? An army of hundreds of developers and outsource teams, working for years in complete secrecy on what FIFA hopes will be the most popular sim soccer game in the world?
From the outside at least, Delphi Interactive appears to be a financial instrument for hashing out deals. What does it mean to be an AAA publisher with no obvious development experience? “In the era of digital game distribution, we believe that if you have access to a beloved global intellectual property, and you have access to capital to develop and market games, and you have access to the best independent development talent, you can actually make a successful AAA game outside of what we now lovingly refer to as the ’publisher industrial complex’ that has sort of traditionally oligopolized the AAA space,” Daugaard told Variety last year. So there’s that, I guess?
One possibility is that Netflix, FIFA, and Delphi Interactive will outsource most of the actual making of this new game to studios abroad, likely in cheaper labor markets where armies of developers can brute-force something into existence in record time. Or maybe the plan is to take a soccer sim that’s already in existence and reskin it with FIFA logos and the likenesses of international stars. “Stay tuned for more details soon,” Daugaard wrote this week.
It doesn’t help instill confidence that the other two groups involved don’t have great track records. After throwing itself into gaming, including trying to make its own internal blockbuster studio with seasoned industry talent, Netflix has retreated into simple party games and branded cash-ins of its popular streaming franchises. FIFA, meanwhile, remains one of the grimiest international operators out there. It recently invented a fake peace prize to appease President Donald Trump ahead of the World Cup. It’ll be much harder to fake an alternative to EA Sports FC.
Delphi Interactive and FIFA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.