''FIFA Football 2003'', known as ''FIFA Soccer 2003'' in North America, and simply ''FIFA 2003'' is a

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly ...

simulation A simulation is the imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system over time. Simulations require the use of Conceptual model, models; the model represents the key characteristics or behaviors of the selected system or proc ...

video game produced by

Electronic Arts Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry and promoted the ...

and released by

EA Sports EA Sports is a division of Electronic Arts that develops and publishes sports video games. Formerly a marketing gimmick of Electronic Arts, in which they tried to imitate real-life sports networks by calling themselves the "EA Sports Network ...

. It was released in 2002. ''FIFA 2003'' is the tenth game in the ''FIFA'' series and the eighth to be produced in 3D.

Gameplay

A number of new features were added to improve upon the previous version. Club Championship Mode was introduced with the feature of playing against 17 of Europe's top clubs in their own stadiums and the fans singing their unique chants and songs. A TV-style broadcast package gives highlights at half-time and full-time, as well as comprehensive analysis. One of the most anticipated new features was EA Sport's "Freestyle Control" which allows the user to flick the ball on and lay it off to team mates. Other additions include greater likenesses of some of the more well-known players such as

Thierry Henry Thierry Daniel Henry (born 17 August 1977) is a French professional football coach, pundit, and former player who is an assistant coach for the Belgium national team. Considered one of the best strikers of all time and one of the best player ...

and

Ronaldinho Ronaldo de Assis Moreira (born 21 March 1980), commonly known as Ronaldinho Gaúcho () or simply Ronaldinho, is a Brazilian retired professional footballer who played mostly as an attacking midfielder, but was also deployed as a winger. Wide ...

, as well as realistic player responses.

Players

The European cover features

Roberto Carlos Roberto Carlos da Silva Rocha (born 10 April 1973), commonly known as Roberto Carlos, is a Brazilian former professional footballer who now works as a football ambassador. He started his career in Brazil as a forward but spent most of his car ...

Ryan Giggs Ryan Joseph Giggs (né Wilson; 29 November 1973) is a Welsh football coach and former player. Regarded as one of the greatest players of his generation, Giggs played his entire professional career for Manchester United and briefly served as ...

, and

Edgar Davids Edgar Steven Davids (; born 13 March 1973) is a Dutch-Surinamese former professional footballer and current coach. After beginning his career with Ajax, winning several domestic and international titles, he subsequently played in Italy for AC ...

, representing

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

Manchester United Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The ...

and

Juventus Juventus Football Club (from la, iuventūs, 'youth'; ), colloquially known as Juve (), is a professional football club based in Turin, Piedmont, Italy, that competes in the Serie A, the top tier of the Italian football league system. Founded in ...

respectively. In the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

Landon Donovan Landon Timothy Donovan (born March 4, 1982) is an American former professional soccer player. Donovan is also the co-founder and vice-president of soccer operations for USL Championship side San Diego Loyal SC, and serves as strategic advisor f ...

appeared on the cover alone.

Reception

Upon release, ''FIFA 2003'' was initially outsold by ''

Pro Evolution Soccer 2 ''Pro Evolution Soccer 2'' (abbreviated as ''PES 2''), also known as ''World Soccer: Winning Eleven 6'' outside of Europe, is the second installment of Konami's ''Pro Evolution Soccer'' football simulation video game series. The Japanese release w ...

'' (''PES2'') in October 2002, but ''FIFA 2003'' later overtook ''PES'' by December 2002, when ''FIFA'' had sold copies across Europe. The PlayStation 2 version of ''FIFA Football 2003'' received a "Double Platinum" sales award from the

Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association The Association for UK Interactive Entertainment (Ukie) is a non-profit trade association for the video game industry in the United Kingdom (UK). Ukie was originally founded as the European Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA), and the ...

(ELSPA), indicating sales of at least 600,000 copies in the United Kingdom. The game received "generally favorable reviews" on all platforms except the PlayStation version, which received "average" reviews, according to the review aggregation website

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

. ''FIFA Football 2003'' was a runner-up for ''GameSpot''s annual "Best Sports Game on PC" award, which went to ''

Madden NFL 2003 ''Madden NFL 2003'' is an American football simulation video game based on the NFL that was developed by EA Tiburon and Budcat Creations and published by EA Sports. The 14th installment of the '' Madden NFL series'', the game features former St. ...

''.

References

External links

FIFA 2003 website
* {{Authority control 2002 video games Electronic Arts games EA Sports games Association football video games 2 Game Boy Advance games GameCube games Mobile games PlayStation (console) games PlayStation 2 games Video games developed in Canada Windows games Xbox games Video games set in 2002 Video games set in 2003 La Liga licensed video games Exient Entertainment games Multiplayer and single-player video games