Fifa 21 - suggest a platform

dinomite

Hi folks,

Apologies if this is the wrong forum for this question!

My son, 11, says he wants a switch for Christmas to play fifa 21. He has a 3ds, running an older version of fifa and his cousin has a switch, hence he was thinking this.

We have no other console, but he does a little gaming on a pc.

Looking around, fifa on switch seems to work very poorly, and as he has a handheld, would seem a waste. I was looking at xbox s but wondering if better to get decent tablet and go xbox cloud, but not sure if this works well?

Have 150mb broadband coming into house. Any thoughts would be very much appreciated.

johnny_ultimate

If the PC is decent and runs new games well, you could happily stick with that. Would need to know its specs though. The Switch versions of FIFA are frankly a disgrace so as you’ve said they’re not good enough.

If you’re just focused on FIFA and maybe a few other games here and there and the PC is a good bit older, I’d say the Xbox Series S is your best bet. It’s affordable (300 quid) and next-gen so you’re guaranteed the latest version of the game for the next number of years. It’s not quite as capable as the more expensive next gen consoles, but doesn’t sound like you’ll need the extra horsepower.

Only issue is whether you can get one! It’s just out this week so unsure what availability will be like. But if you’re willing to hold out, it’s IMO your best bet.

dinomite

Thanks for that - I have been able to reserve a series S version in argos today. Just hoping my Internet will be good enough for playing games.

Shiminay

You may not have spotted, but there's no disc drive in the Series S, so every game has to be downloaded. If your internet's a bit ropey, this might mean a disappointing Christmas day of waiting for things to update slowly (as there'll be thousands of new Xboxes going online at the same time). It's well worth opening it all up and setting these things up ahead of time, creating an account for playing online (you need a separate payment for this for the XBox Live Gold service). You'll then want to download the game. You'll still have to jump through these hoops even if you opt for the more expensive Series X that has a disc drive, even with a disc in the machine, they usually have to go online for updates and so on.

dinomite

Thanks for the advice Shiminay. Was able to get the series s just booking today in local argos. I see fifa./ea games will be part of the xbox games pass ultimate, and will allow for playing on pc via xcloud eventually too, which seems to be the way things are going.

Do you know if I am using the games pass, does this allow me to download games digitally and use offline if Internet is bad, or will I have to purchase the games I wish to download digitally?

Apologies for what may seem basic questions... Just new to all of this ☺️

Shiminay

Perfectly sensible questions Using that service, you download the game to the machine and I'm 99% sure it allows offline play. I use the "Ultimate" service on my PC and anything I want to play from the Archive, it downloads and installs itself to my PC like any other game.

dinomite

Just in case anyone else has this query too, I've been reading a number of reviews on the series x s today, and offline use appears to work in the way that Shiminay describes above, but the Xbox has to be designated as my home xbox.

Thanks for the advice folks!