EA’s ‘FIFA’ has accurately predicted four World Cup winners in a row

EA Sports has now accurately predicted the World Cup winner for the fourth time in a row, following Argentina’s victory over France at yesterday’s final. (December 18).

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The only people unsurprised were at EA. The gaming giant predicted as much through its World Cup simulation last month, in which it used FIFA 23 to simulate all 64 matches of this year’s World Cup in order to predict the winner. This year, EA forecast a win for Argentina – the fourth time it has done so, after correctly predicting the World Cup winners in 2010, 2014 and 2018.

EA’s predictions weren’t completely on-point, however. Their forecast saw Argentina going against Brazil in the final, with Argentina securing their victory through a single goal. Slight inaccuracies aside, it’s startlingly close to what actually happened, particularly since it had predicted France to come in third in the tournament.

It’s also worth noting that while EA was wrong about Brazil making it to the final – it absolutely was a closely-fought match. The final was decided through penalties, where Argentina defeated France 4-3, after the game finished on 3-3. So EA was right again on one count at least – the game was decided by a single goal.

The simulation was inaccurate on a few other counts too. EA had predicted that Lionel Messi would be awarded the Golden Boot, while in reality this year’s leading goalscorer was France’s Kylian Mbappe.

EA’s simulations seem to be pretty reliable for picking World Cup winners, however. Their previous simulations, saw Spain winning in 2010, Germany in 2014 and France in 2018.

The company has been remarkably less successful when predicting the results of other sporting events, however. EA has used its Madden series to predict the winners of the last 11 Super Bowls, but has only guessed five of those correctly.

In other gaming news, Microsoft is asking fans about their opinions on a potential advert-supported tier of their Game Pass subscription service.