Sports games
What sports games offer beyond the sport itself, and which football games people actually play.
Sports games recreate real sports, usually with official teams, players and competitions. They are among the most consistently popular games worldwide, and reliably the most popular genre in this region.
What they actually contain
Modern sports titles are several games in one:
Quick match — pick two teams and play.
Career or manager mode — run a club or a player over multiple seasons, handling transfers, tactics and development.
Ultimate Team modes — build a squad from collected player cards. Hugely popular and built around optional spending; worth knowing before handing the game to a child.
Online competitive — ranked play against other people.
Local multiplayer — two players on one screen, which is where a lot of the appeal lives.
What are the most popular football games?
EA Sports FC is the dominant series — previously published as FIFA, renamed after the licensing change, with the same development team and largely the same design. It carries most of the major club licences and, importantly for players here, full Arabic commentary.
eFootball, formerly Pro Evolution Soccer, is the main alternative and is free-to-play.
Beyond football: NBA 2K for basketball, WWE 2K for wrestling, F1 for motorsport, and Madden for American football.
The annual release question
Most sports series release yearly with updated squads and incremental changes. Whether that is worth buying every year depends on you.
If you play online, you generally need the current version — the player base moves and the older game empties out. If you play offline or locally, last year''s edition at a much lower price is often the better value, since the gameplay differences between consecutive years are usually modest.
Buying advice
Check two things: which edition you are getting, since sports games often have several with different in-game content, and whether the copy includes Arabic commentary, which varies by edition and region.
Ask us on 16280 and we will confirm before you order. See our games for what is in stock.