FIFA 22's PC edition will miss out on next-gen features (2024)

FIFA 22's PC edition will be based on the current generation of consoles, locking desktop football fans out of some of this year's much-touted next-gen features.

This year's iteration on the annual kickabout was unveiled over the weekend, FIFA 22 boasts what EA is calling "HyperMotion"—a new animation tech that, according to the official site, uses motion capture and machine learning to generate more believable animations in real-time.

It seems like a neat way of crafting more believable matches. Shame, then, that you won't be able to experience it on PC. The feature is only available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and Stadia, with PC getting a pared down version along with the older consoles.

This has, of course, been the state of affairs for some time. The audience that plays FIFA each year isn't quite the same as folks putting together beefy PCs, and EA has operated on the idea that the game would have to run on much lower-spec rigs.

"When we looked at what generation to put the PC game on, we looked at our fans and what capabilities they had with the hardware they have," executive producer Aaron McHardy told Eurogamer last November, regarding the decision to make the same split with FIFA 21.

"We have that information to understand what the power of the PCs out there in the world are. When we looked at that, in order to run the gen five game, our min spec would have been at a spot that would have left a lot of people out in the cold not being able to play the game."

Prior to 2010, PC versions of FIFA were even further behind their console counterparts. Even so, as Eurogamer again points out, fans still aren't happy with the split, with one Redditor writing: "[HyperMotion] is probably just a marketing gimmick but the fact that PC will have last gen again is unfair."

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