First FIFA soccer videogame to feature female players

In May 2015, EA revealed that FIFA 16 - the 23rd game in the FIFA series - would feature 12 top-ranked international women's soccer teams. It is the first time that women have appeared as playable stars in a major soccer game. The available teams were Germany, USA, France, Sweden, England, Brazil, Canada, Australia, Spain, China, Italy and Mexico. “It’s probably one of the most important additions we’ve ever made to the series," declared EA senior producer Nick Channon to MCV in June 2015. "The women’s game has become very popular and the growth of it in the last few years has been huge." In 2012, an online petition was launched campaigning for female soccer teams in FIFA. It attracted 13,027 signatures, but proved unsuccessful at the time. EA used new mo-capping technology to authentically replicate the look and movement of female soccer stars. One of the biggest challenges was accurately modelling long hair. “We had to do a lot of optimization and work to make sure that the hair movement could be seen, because you can see it while you're playing,” EA's Nick Shannon told arstechnica.com in May 2015. “The technology has been there, but we couldn't get it working in this camera at 60 [frames per second] so we had to do some work around that, some optimization. Obviously, coming to gen 4 [the PS4 and Xbox One] has helped us to do that.”

FIFA 16 was due for release in September 2015.