FIFA 23 features two women’s football leagues and 1v1 cross-play

Having shown off the game’s cover art to star the week, EA’s big FIFA 23 reveal is upon us, giving a broad overview of how they’re taking the final EA Sports FIFA game to the next level. This includes adding domestic women’s football leagues, 1v1 cross-play, a new Power Shot system and plenty more.

FIFA 23 will launch on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, Stadia, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on September 30th, with early access for the Ultimate Edition on 27th September.

As was teased by Sam Kerr appearing in her Chelsea kit on the cover art, EA has now confirmed that FIFA 23 will feature two women’s leagues – the English Women’s Super League and the French Division 1 Arkema – finally expanding the support of women’s football beyond the national teams that were first added in FIFA 16. That also ties in nicely to FIFA 23 featuring both the men’s World Cup in Qatar this winter, and the women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand which takes place next summer.

Underscoring EA’s commitment to women’s football, they’ve taken the Gen9 exclusive HyperMotion technology introduced in FIFA 22 to the next level, recording two further full matches, one for the men’s game and one for the women’s. All of this has been fed into the machine learning algorithms behind HyperMotion2, which have been extended to give more realistic look and feel to dribbling, jockeying when defending, ball striking, and goalkeeper battles against headers.

Further gameplay changes have been made with a new Power Shots system that adds a risk-reward mechanic for more powerful shots that take longer to get off and have direct aiming, while free kicks, penalties and corners now let you choose where to strike the ball, changing trajectory, curl and more.

Looking to teach all of this to newcomers, a new Training Centre will serve up new and improved skill games, to both test and teach you about the game’s finer systems.

All of the usual game modes will be present within FIFA 23, including a deep career mode, FIFA Ultimate Team, Pro Clubs and Volta Football, but there’s been shakeups here as well.

For online multiplayer, all 1v1 matches now support cross-play matchmaking, however, this is limited to within a particular generation. PS4 and Xbox One play together, while Nintendo Switch (which has a rubbish Legacy Edition once again) will be on its own. PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Stadia and the PC version (which is being bumped up to Gen9 for the first time) will all play together.

This applies across Online Friendlies, FUT Play A Friend, Online Seasons, FUT Online Friendlies, FUT Rivals, FUT Champions, and FUT Online Draft.

If you’re a fan of Pro Clubs and Volta Football, then one curious change is that they will now be united with cross-mode progression for your player, unlocking many customisation, play and character progression that applies through both modes. You’ll earn Pro Clubs XP regardless of the mode you play.