As consoles have entered a newer level of in-house power, Electronic Arts decided that it was time to upgrade their flagship football franchise a step higher toward realism. In an interview with CVG, Electronic Arts' Andrew Wilson revealed other features coming to next-gen football, aside from dynamic commentary.

Stepping up to next-gen allowed the FIFA titles to explore into better AI, which could introduce more realism to the point of better AI-to-player teamwork. With more data to process, the AI can be given more room for decision-making, making them far more cooperative and cunning than past titles.

FIFA 07 was the first title Electronic Arts slapped into a new engine. The new engine allowed EA to individualize character ability and skill, and even give the ball it's own share of physics in-game. In line with AI, they noticed that they could focus on a much deeper aspect of decision-making instead of "because x is y, I should z."

So FIFA 08 (coming to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360), the second title to be sporting this engine, may be built with that aspect in mind.

But instead of just going for next-gen animations, physics and AI for players, Electronic Arts is planning on integrating an Emotion Engine for future titles. This emotional interaction of in-game players and the crowd will introduce an even deeper aspect of realism. Wilson explains:

We had one of our engineers at GDC who started last year what we termed 'Emotion Engine' which was about building a foundation for driving crowd reaction based on little micro-trends within the game. So different things happening within the crowd will have an impact on how your team plays on the field. If you're getting booed constantly it will have a mental affect on your performance. We started this last year and we're continuing development of that feature.