FIFA Ultimate Team is by far the most popular game mode in FIFA 23, as has been the case pretty much since the online mode’s inception in 2009.
If you are among the millions of players engaging in FUT activities, you’re aware just how important the economy is within the mode. What you might have missed is the huge discrepancy between the economy on consoles and on PC.
There’s a price for everything in FUT, but some surface-level digging shows not all price tags are created equal. The same FIFA 23 content will be sold at vastly different prices on different platforms, and it’s one particular platform that always gets the short end of the stick.
PC gamers that dabble in FUT on the regular risk developing crippling depression if they as much as peek at the FUT market on consoles. You can pick any random player item and compare its market value on PC and console and you’ll universally see the same theme—every FUT item is more expensive on PC. In some cases, the price difference is so large, the card is in a different range altogether.
All of this naturally feels unfair, and PC players will probably feel that way regardless of the explanation for this phenomenon. We can’t really blame them for it, but we’d still like to shed some light on the market logic behind this discouraging trend.
We can’t guarantee understanding the issue would make anyone feel any better about it, but we sure hope so.
Why do FUT players cost more on PC in FIFA 23?
The reason why FUT items cost more on PC than they do on consoles is the common demand and supply rule of economics. The PC FUT market is not nearly as large as the console market, which brings prices up based on low supply.
You might be thinking that if there are fewer players on PC, then the demand would also be lower to balance it out, but that’s sadly not how it works. If there is one apple and two people that really want that apple, the apple would be way more valuable than if there are a million apples and two million people that want an apple. Particularly when there are also a million pears waiting to be snatched at the same time.
This fruitful comparison could not have been necessary to explain the FUT pricing issues if EA had done with the PC market the same thing they did with the console market. The previously separated PlayStation and Xbox markets were merged for FIFA 23 as part of EA’s expanded cross-play options. It’s anyone’s guess why the PC market was kept as its own entity, though it probably has to do with the notoriously widespread cheating on the platform.
If this is indeed the case, then EA needs to fix one issue (PC cheaters), so it can fix another (the FUT market disparity).
We’re not saying this is impossible, but with the history of PC cheating and EA’s fruitless (last fruit pun, we promise) fight, it’s perhaps for the best to place your hopes elsewhere.
