While fans rejoice or cry over the FIFA World Cup Finals, apparently, EA’s FIFA 23 already predicted the same outcome that matched in real life.
As per tradition, EA used its latest FIFA game, FIFA 23, to predict the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 winner. Surprisingly, the game correctly predicted that Argentina would win, making this a historic fourth time in a row this has happened. However, the simulation did not nail every detail to a tee.
The whole Round of 32 teams that qualified for the FIFA World Cup was simulated through FIFA 23, and it predicted the final winner was Argentina, with Lionel Messi winning the Golden Boot and Emi Martínez winning the Golden Glove awards. To add, this simulated prediction was published on November 8, prior to the world tournament actually taking place.
Some interesting differences were that France’s Kylian Mbappe won the Golden Boot and the fact that Argentina faced France in the finals. Mbappe had an amazing tournament, scoring a hat-trick in the finals—but unfortunately, could not steer the win for France. The Golden Boot race was close as Messi had 7 total goals to Mbappe’s 8.
The game predicted that Argentina would face Brazil in the finals, and France placed third. This did not happen at the FIFA World Cup in Qatar, as Brazil was knocked out of the tournament in the quarter-final bout against Croatia. Everything else pretty much played out as FIFA 23 simulated.
Despite a nail-biting FIFA World Cup match, history was made on the world-class pitch and the game version. The first time EA’s FIFA games predicted the right winners was back in 2010 where Spain won. Then, the game’s simulation was able to call the FIFA World Cup winners of Germany in 2014 and France in 2018.
If you were wondering if EA was able to recreate the same weird magic in their other sports games like the Madden NFL games for the Super Bowls, well, the results were a little less exciting. VGC pointed out that only 5 of the last 11 Super Bowls were correctly predicted through the game’s simulation.
Notably, the game predicted Super Bowl 49 very accurately when the score matched exactly in the match between the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks. So, it looks like EA is only good at predicting one type of football!
While this was cool to see how the game’s simulations got it right for the fourth time in a row, it could be a scary indicator that could cause much disturbance. Or maybe it just shows how accurate the performance levels of each team at the time truly were. I guess we will have to see a fifth reading in 2026 to see more.
