Recent EA Sports titles including Madden 21 and NHL 21 included betas or game demos ahead of the official title’s release date. However, in a FIFA 21 demo update today, EA announced that won’t be the case for their football simulation title. It will mark the first time that the game hasn’t utilized a demo prior to the release too.
EA releases FIFA 21 demo update statement
EA Sports FIFA posted an official statement on their Twitter on Monday (Sept. 21) to inform gamers about their decision not to release a FIFA 21 demo. “We’ve made the decision to focus our development team’s time on delivering the best full game experience for current & next-gen consoles,” EA’s statement said.
“We look forward to EA PLAY members jumping in 10 days from now and launching the game Oct 9,” the statement concluded.
EA generally releases a FIFA demo version ahead of the full game each year. A FIFA 20 demo came out on September 20, 2019, while a FIFA 19 demo arrived on September 13, 2018.
The demo versions typically allow gamers to test out gameplay with just a few modes and a select number of teams available. For example, the arrival of the new VOLTA mode in the past several years made it something EA gave fans a chance to try out in the demo.
The FIFA 21 update arrives as there had been speculation EA was planning this year’s demo release date for around Tuesday, September 22. However, it appears that gamers will have to rely on EA Play as a way to get in to check out the game early now.
EA Play, select pre-orders give early access
With the FIFA 21 demo update that there is no free version to try out, gamers will now need to put their faith into pre-orders and EA Play. Any customers who pre-order either the Champions or Ultimate Edition of the game, get to begin playing three days earlier on October 6.
EA Play is EA’s subscription service. For a monthly or annual charge, gamers get exclusive access to game titles and other benefits including discounts. So that will allow gamers to test out FIFA 21 starting on October 1, 2020.
However, the caveat with EA Play is it will only allow a total of 10 hours of playing time, so it still won’t be quite like a demo, necessarily. Even so, 10 hours may give many gamers a good overview of the new EA FIFA game.
EA Play is available for Xbox One, PlayStation, Origin, and Steam with a cost of $4.99 per month, or $29.99 per year. See more details here on EA’s website. Earlier this month, Xbox Game Pass revealed EA Play is included with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and Game Pass PC.
Meanwhile, the FIFA 21 game officially releases for consoles on October 9, 2020. We’ve now learned that the next-generation Xbox Series X will arrive on November 10. Sony’s PlayStation 5 will come out on November 12.
Thanks to a Dual Entitlement program, gamers will be able to upgrade FIFA 21 free of charge. That will allow upgrading from their current-gen over to the same brand of the next-gen console (PS4 to PS5 or Xbox One to Series X).
Visit our FIFA news page for more of the latest game updates.