PlayStation almost made FIFA exclusive – how Sony could have rewritten the history of football games

In the late 1990s, Sony was on the verge of making the FIFA series a PlayStation exclusive, which would have radically changed the entire football simulation market. Former Sony employees recounted this in an interview with TheGameBusiness, which coincided with the PlayStation brand's 30th anniversary in Europe.

According to Juan Montes, vice president of software development at Sony from 1994 to 2000, the company's team was actively working on its own football game at the time, which was impressive in both its technical level and the quality of its execution. It was then that Sony found itself on the brink of acquiring the FIFA license and making the franchise exclusive to its consoles.

According to Montes, negotiations went very far, but PlayStation management decided to abandon the deal to preserve its relationship with Electronic Arts, a key partner in publishing and supporting games on the platform. Instead, Sony released its own football projects, This is Football and This is Football 2, created with the support of the FIFPro organization, but without the official FIFA brand.