FIFA 22's Next-Gen Upgrade Is Locked Behind an Incredibly High Cost

The release date and debut trailer for FIFA 22 was just revealed by Electronic Arts yesterday along with the announcement of some next-gen improvements. As a whole, the game itself looks like it will be more technically impressive than ever before, which is somewhat to be expected. Sadly, if you're someone who is looking to pick FIFA 22 up on last-gen hardware at launch and later upgrade to next-gen consoles, you'll have to pay a pretty penny.

EA has revealed that FIFA 22 won't be a game that will be able to freely upgrade to its next-gen counterparts if you happen to buy it for older hardware such as PlayStation 4 or Xbox One at first. While many other video game publishers have allowed purchasers to later upgrade certain titles if they acquire a next-gen console at a later date, EA is going to be charging users much more money for this process.

Outlined on EA's website, the publisher explained that those who want to play FIFA 22 across both last-gen and current generation hardware will have to receive "Dual Entitlement". To obtain this, users will have to purchase the Ultimate Edition of FIFA 22, which as you might expect from the title, costs more money than normal. As a whole, FIFA 22 Ultimate Edition will retail for $99.99, which is much higher than retail cost for just the base game. So rather than being able to upgrade at a later date for no additional charge, customers will be forced to pay a mark up of over 50% higher than normal.

Obviously, you can still buy FIFA 22 on its own for individual platforms if you don't care about playing between different console generations. The base game itself will retail for $59.99 on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 while the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 editions will cost $69.99.

What makes this so surprising is that EA actually didn't do this same tactic with its sports titles last year. FIFA 21 was able to be upgraded for free on next-gen hardware once it arrived assuming that you already owned the game. So for the company to run back that rule this year is a bit frustrating.

So what do you think about this new move from EA with FIFA 22? Let me know either down in the comments or over on Twitter at @MooreMan12.

[H/T GamesRadar]