FIFA 16 video game to feature women’s soccer teams

For the first time since it made its debut in 1993, the FIFA video game will feature women’s teams in the upcoming FIFA 16 release, due out this September.

Twelve women’s national teams will be added including Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, England, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Spain, Sweden, and the United States of America. These teams will compete in Kick Off, an offline tournament, as well as online friendly matches.

EA Sports is not taking any shortcuts on this new addition, inviting Sydney Leroux, Abby Wambach, Alex Morgan, and Megan Rapinoe to EA Sports in Canada for a motion capture session to better animate everything from facial features to the way these ladies run. There are new walks, sprints and horizontal movements built just for the 12 new teams in the game. The company’s mobile head-scanning unit traveled to games across the world to ensure the newest additions look as realistic as possible.

“We’re all excited to see ourselves in the game, but even more excited to see the reaction from all of the fans, including the fans of our team that maybe wouldn’t be expecting something like this from EA SPORTS,” said Wambach.

The FIFA video games are notoriously popular, especially in the United States where it seems the video game fans outnumber the fans of the actual game. Including these women’s national teams in the game is a step in the right direction and should encourage fans to explore these successful national teams. The expansion news has come at the perfect time with the Women’s World Cup set to kick-off in Canada only a few weeks from today and momentum from the tournament could carry over to the FIFA 16 release very easily.

The game looks great, so far, and fans can get a look at what these new teams will look like at the YouTube clip below and by looking at the picture included up top which is the France Women’s National Football team facing off against the England Women’s National Football team who face-off in their first matches in Canada on June 6th.