FiFA [2006-2011] Next gen ports via RPCS3 and Xenia

[Sami 1999]

It was unfortunate that we got old gen ports of some of my favorite FiFA games [2006-2008] on pc and thus I have been keeping an eye on the emulators for quite a long time. The current state of emulating FiFA isn't that great. However, this year RPCS3 got major progress regarding performance on FiFA games.

We went from unplayable slow motion gameplay to almost playable performance. The only thing that's keeping them from being playable are the crashes that occur randomly.

I've some xbox 360 and ps3 copies of some of these games and tested them on my PC. And these are the current state of the games:


RPCS3:

Fifa 08: Crashes randomly. So sometimes you will crash on start screen, sometimes mid game and sometimes if you are lucky, you will be able to finish a match or even two.

Spoiler

Benchmark:

Fifa 09: Random crashes but less than Fifa 08. Sound is awfully broken. Performance is a bit slow. But you can finish more matches than you can with Fifa 08.

Spoiler

Fifa 10: The cursed bug is gone finally and the game seems to be fully playable with some minor graphical bugs, like the player names on the back of the jersey not rendering correctly.

Spoiler

Gameplay:

Cursed bug:

Fifa 10 WC: Playable almost perfectly other than some minor graphical bugs and audio stutters

Spoiler

Gameplay:

Fifa 11: Completely playable. There's minor graphic glitch. But you can play the game just fine.


Xenia:

Fifa RTWC 06: Crashes after EA logo

Update: FMVs load instantly now and you can see the first license detail screen now but the emulator immediately freezes after that.

FiFA WC 06: Sometimes goes as far as the match intro cutscene and then crashes.

Update: Can go up to gameplay but crashes very soon. Performance improved on the recent builds. FMVs load up instantly now.

Spoiler

Gameplay:

2nd attempt [starting gameplay]:

FiFA 07: Game boots up in latest Xenia canary build. But right after you start a match, it crashes.

Spoiler

Gameplay:

FiFA 08: Seems to be finally playable on Xenia canary. Same issues like Euro 08 so it still needs some polishing. Some stadiums have over bright pitch, making it very hard to play on those stadiums on day time even after lowering the brightness in game since the levels are crushed either way.

Spoiler

Gameplay:

Oh, by the way. PES 06 [aka PES 07] runs completely fine on Xenia.

Spoiler

PES 07:

Recent update of Xenia fixed some graphical issues on some games, but also increased the performance hit.

Xenia is more GPU heavy and RPCS3 is more CPU heavy.


I tested these games on my 980 Ti and i7 6700k which were clearly not good enough, but works to some extent. As for RPCS3, Vulkan API works best on the games.

For Fifa 08 and 09: SPU and PPU decoder should be set to LLVM Recompiler.
Write color buffer should be checked.
Disable vertex cache should be checked.

For Fifa 10 and 11: SPU decoder should be set to ASMJIT Recompiler.
Write color buffer should be un-checked.
Disable vertex cache should be un-checked.[/SPOILER]

 

[manmachine]

nice thread, cheers.
I get similar results, the 2 games I wanted to test are 09 & 10, I also get the disappearing gk in 10, and 09 is unfortunately not playable for me as well. It's a bit strange that more recent games seem to work better, but what can you do other than wait for rpcs improvements

 

[Sami 1999]

nice thread, cheers.
I get similar results, the 2 games I wanted to test are 09 & 10, I also get the disappearing gk in 10, and 09 is unfortunately not playable for me as well. It's a bit strange that more recent games seem to work better, but what can you do other than wait for rpcs improvements

Yeah. What are your pc specs?

FiFA 08 is playable to some extent. Even today I played and finished 2 matches after crashing many times lol.

 

[manmachine]

Yeah. What are your pc specs?

FiFA 08 is playable to some extent. Even today I played and finished 2 matches after crashing many times lol.

Oh it's worse than yours, I know cpu is key and i'm on a i5. But surprisingly I get a very playable framerate with fifa 10 (almost a constant 59+ with an occasional stutter every now and then) until the GK disappears of course and it's game over!

Not too fussed about it, I was mainly curious to test 09 after all these years because it's highly regarded. I will probably upgrade my pc this winter as well, and I expect rpcs3 to be even better by then.

 

[Marlon Anthony]

Thanks for this. I was interested in emulating some of these games too, Mainly FIFA 06 RTWC & PES 6 but haven't spent much time getting used to Xenia. It doesn't seem very deep in regards to configuration settings like a PCSX2 or Dolphin

 

[Sami 1999]

Oh it's worse than yours, I know cpu is key and i'm on a i5. But surprisingly I get a very playable framerate with fifa 10 (almost a constant 59+ with an occasional stutter every now and then) until the GK disappears of course and it's game over!

Not too fussed about it, I was mainly curious to test 09 after all these years because it's highly regarded. I will probably upgrade my pc this winter as well, and I expect rpcs3 to be even better by then.

Yeah, FiFA games aren't that performance hungry. So the only reason for the games being unplayable on your hardware are the game breaking bugs and the crashes.

Someone accidentally labelled FiFA 08 as Playable on the recent build of Rpcs3. I can confirm that's not the case at all. FiFA 08 still crashes.

Thanks for this. I was interested in emulating some of these games too, Mainly FIFA 06 RTWC & PES 6 but haven't spent much time getting used to Xenia. It doesn't seem very deep in regards to configuration settings like a PCSX2 or Dolphin

Haha, Xenia is the most easiest emulator I've used in my life. You just extract the files, and then run a game. That's it.



Personally I'm most interested in playing FiFA 06-08. Also FiFA 08 is the last game that actually had 3D grass during cutscenes [but the 3d grass draw distance on FiFA 08 was too low]. However that's on the x360 port. Idk if Ps3 port of FiFA 08 even had 3D grass.

And from FiFA 09, they somehow screwed it up and grass only showed in replay and not in actual cutscenes.

 

[Topaz]

FIFA 07 had a next gen version as well right? Does it work with the emu?

 

[manmachine]

Haha, Xenia is the most easiest emulator I've used in my life. You just extract the files, and then run a game. That's it.

Checking the xenia compatibility list, no fifa game is listed as playable though?

 

[Marlon Anthony]

Haha, Xenia is the most easiest emulator I've used in my life. You just extract the files, and then run a game. That's it.

I'll give it another try, What controller you using? I'm using a PS4 controller with DS4Windows - So i'm not sure if the buttons are mapped appropriately as there seems to be no controller input option in the emulator?

However that's on the x360 port. Idk if Ps3 port of FiFA 08 even had 3D grass.

You may be right but most of the PS3 FIFA's were graphically inferior to their 360 counterparts. PS3 ports of cross platform titles notoriously had less polished graphics and less stable framerates due to the difficulty of developing for the hardware and time constraints especially for annual games; Like FIFA.

FIFA 07 had a next gen version as well right? Does it work with the emu?

That's right, The second FIFA released on 360 but the first official annual release on 360.

 

[Sami 1999]

FIFA 07 had a next gen version as well right? Does it work with the emu?

Checking the xenia compatibility list, no fifa game is listed as playable though?

No. None of the FiFA games are playable on Xenia at the moment. Only Soccer game that I tested that runs on Xenia is PES 06/07 which runs flawlessly.

I'll give it another try, What controller you using? I'm using a PS4 controller with DS4Windows - So i'm not sure if the buttons are mapped appropriately as there seems to be no controller input option in the emulator?

You may be right but most of the PS3 FIFA's were graphically inferior to their 360 counterparts. PS3 ports of cross platform titles notoriously had less polished graphics and less stable framerates due to the difficulty of developing for the hardware and time constraints especially for annual games; Like FIFA.

I'm playing with just keyboard. Xenia at the moment only supports Xinput. So to play with DS4, you need something like DS4 to translate it to Xinput.

Keyboard can't mapped either. So it's kinda hard to play with keyboard for me but my gamepads are dead.

Yeah, most cross platform games suffered on Ps3. If 3D grass really is missing on the Ps3 port of FiFA 08, then I'll have to wait for Xenia to be able to run this game.

 

[Marlon Anthony]

@Sami 1999 So what did you think of 360 PES 6 then? It's the one PES game i haven't been able to go back and play due to being 360 exclusive. I've watched videos on YouTube and it doesn't seem that similar to PES 2008 like i initially thought it would be.

I (maybe foolishly) brought this on launch with FIFA 07 as they were released on the same day i remember and i remember how excited i was about 2 next gen football games; Thinking that the future was here but as a naive 16 year old, I had no way of knowing these games where basically unfinished when they launched.

 

[Sami 1999]

@Sami 1999 So what did you think of 360 PES 6 then? It's the one PES game i haven't been able to go back and play due to being 360 exclusive. I've watched videos on YouTube and it doesn't seem that similar to PES 2008 like i initially thought it would be.

I (maybe foolishly) brought this on launch with FIFA 07 as they were released on the same day i remember and i remember how excited i was about 2 next gen football games; Thinking that the future was here but as a naive 16 year old, I had no way of knowing these games where basically unfinished when they launched.

Don't bother. You know why?
It doesn't have option file support.


Gameplay wise it feels like PES 06. But if we are only considering gameplay, then you're better off playing the PC port with mods. The game also doesn't have things like untucked kits. Kit's look too tight unlike old gen ports where jersey size and player shape looked realistic.

The overall graphics look good. The game finally has lighting that can compete with FiFA 2002. And the grass texture and color while outdated, still looks aesthetically good to me. And it has actual dense 3D grass unlike the pseudo 3D grass of PES 10 and its sequels.


The thing that kills it though is the lack of Option files. Unlike FiFA, PES doesn't have the luxury of having many licensed teams [although fortunately PES 06 had some good licenses by default] and you can't transfer players and save team management. So that's another annoying thing too.





Overall, both PES 06 and FiFA 07 kinda feels unfinished. PES 06 is more finished than FiFA 07. But FiFA 07 is a more polished product.

As for FiFA 07, it looks worse than Road To World Cup 06. And the faces look worse than RTWC 06. Some being unrecognizable like Christiano Ronaldo who looked fine on RTWC 06.


RTWC 06 is ironically the only one that looks graphically superior than all of its sequels on Xbox 360. The lighting is great, there was some cloth physics which looked good for its time and the 3D grass was very dense. Gameplay was inferior to FiFA 06 but it was playable to be honest.

But the one thing that really caught my attention was the facial animations and gestures that the players made in RTWC 06. It looks outdated now but their facial reactions felt very natural and the subtle gestures they made were more superior than the robotic animations of the sequels [some of them looking even better than FiFA 15].



In conclusion: If you want gameplay, then play FiFA 08 and the sequels. If you look for graphics, then RTWC 06. And for artistically good looking game, play FiFA WC 06.

 

[Sami 1999]

Update: Performance improved drastically on FIFA World Cup 2006. The game still crashes few seconds after a match starts.

But the performance improved to the point where the cutscenes are rendered on 60 FPS too. On actual X360 the cutscenes mostly stay at 30 and only reaches 60 on few scenes. Most probably because double buffered vsync is used on this game.

But with my 980 Ti, the framerate was 60 more frequently even though there were still drops.

And now that the performance improved, it's possible to skip cutscenes and start a match and play it for few seconds. It seems like the emulator crashes after few seconds regardless of skipping the cutscenes.

My first attempt with the recent xenia master build:

2nd attempt and reaching gameplay few times:

 

[Sami 1999]

Fifa World Cup 2010 is fully playable on latest build of rpcs3

Very nice. Almost solid performance, runs even better than fifa 08 and 09 and didn't even crash at least while I played it. Very minor graphical bugs. Only remained issue is the stuttering audio.

This makes it the first console exclusive world cup game to become playable on pc finally.

Next I will try Fifa 14 wc if I can get my hands on it. Hopefully wc 06 becomes playable soon too. Uploading gameplay footage of it.

 

[Marlon Anthony]

Fifa World Cup 2010 is fully playable on latest build of rpcs3

Very nice. Almost solid performance, runs even better than fifa 08 and 09 and didn't even crash at least while I played it. Very minor graphical bugs. Only remained issue is the stuttering audio.

This makes it the first console exclusive world cup game to become playable on pc finally.

Next I will try Fifa 14 wc if I can get my hands on it. Hopefully wc 06 becomes playable soon too. Uploading gameplay footage of it.

I've heard both those WC versions are playable. I was considering trying them, However not sure about the size of the ISO's considering they're blue rays.

Can you upscale the resolution on this emulator as on a native PS3, they don't look so good.

 

[Sami 1999]

I've heard both those WC versions are playable. I was considering trying them, However not sure about the size of the ISO's considering they're blue rays.

Can you upscale the resolution on this emulator as on a native PS3, they don't look so good.

Size is only around 8 GB. Fifa and many other games on ps3 didn't even use half of the disc.

Yes rpcs3 allows you to scale the resolution and there's barely any performance impact for increasing the resolution.

As for Xenia, you can only use 2x res unlike Rpcs3 and Res scale on Xenia almost halves the performance. 2010 wc isnt playable on Xenia anyway. But rpcs3 worked fairly well with my i7 6700k. So it will run even better on newer CPUs.


I've uploaded a gameplay footage but youtube's still processing it. Should take few hours for 1080p to be available. Even though I recorded and played at 1080p, I used 300% res scale [3840x2160] and thus the game was heavily anti aliased and looked clean af.

 

[slamsoze]

Size is only around 8 GB. Fifa and many other games on ps3 didn't even use half of the disc.

Yes rpcs3 allows you to scale the resolution and there's barely any performance impact for increasing the resolution.

As for Xenia, you can only use 2x res unlike Rpcs3 and Res scale on Xenia almost halves the performance. 2010 wc isnt playable on Xenia anyway. But rpcs3 worked fairly well with my i7 6700k. So it will run even better on newer CPUs.


I've uploaded a gameplay footage but youtube's still processing it. Should take few hours for 1080p to be available. Even though I recorded and played at 1080p, I used 300% res scale [3840x2160] and thus the game was heavily anti aliased and looked clean af.

This WC game 2010 ps3, seems to be one of the best FIFA WC games of all times, content wise and gameplay wise.
Shame i donr have neithrr ps3 nor capable pc for ps3 emulator.
From time to time i even think to buy a ps3 or xbox360 just for this game only. Ok and the ps3 Dragon ball series maybe.

 

[Madmac79]

Size is only around 8 GB. Fifa and many other games on ps3 didn't even use half of the disc.

Yes rpcs3 allows you to scale the resolution and there's barely any performance impact for increasing the resolution.

As for Xenia, you can only use 2x res unlike Rpcs3 and Res scale on Xenia almost halves the performance. 2010 wc isnt playable on Xenia anyway. But rpcs3 worked fairly well with my i7 6700k. So it will run even better on newer CPUs.


I've uploaded a gameplay footage but youtube's still processing it. Should take few hours for 1080p to be available. Even though I recorded and played at 1080p, I used 300% res scale [3840x2160] and thus the game was heavily anti aliased and looked clean af.

Looks fantastic.

I also never played it. A shame my pc isn't powerful enough to try it as well.

 

[Sami 1999]

This WC game 2010 ps3, seems to be one of the best FIFA WC games of all times, content wise and gameplay wise.
Shame i donr have neithrr ps3 nor capable pc for ps3 emulator.
From time to time i even think to buy a ps3 or xbox360 just for this game only. Ok and the ps3 Dragon ball series maybe.

Looks fantastic.

I also never played it. A shame my pc isn't powerful enough to try it as well.

The game does suffer from severe fps drop on cutscenes even on ps3 and xbox 360.

Anyway, now that next gen consoles are coming, price of current gen pc hardares will fall. So you might be able to get a CPU that can run fifa games of rpcs3 in a decent way. My i7 6700k at this point is years old.

 

[Sami 1999]

By the way, file structure of this game is almost similar to pc port of fifa 11. So it's possible to mod the game I hope.

 

[Nisoley]

I loved WC 2010 game. It was the best FIFA ever so I think I'll test it on my PC. I hope it works.

 

[Sami 1999]

I loved WC 2010 game. It was the best FIFA ever so I think I'll test it on my PC. I hope it works.

I don't know if it matters but my copy of Fifa 10 Wc is from USA region [BLUS30474]. I personally haven't tested European versions, so I can't confirm if those will work.

Also my rpcs3 version was "0.0.9-9905 5d78d81c alpha" just in case the even newer builds don't work [Rpcs3 gets update almost everyday]

 

[Nisoley]

I don't know if it matters but my copy of Fifa 10 Wc is from USA region [BLUS30474]. I personally haven't tested European versions, so I can't confirm if those will work.

Also my rpcs3 version was "0.0.9-9905 5d78d81c alpha" just in case the even newer builds don't work [Rpcs3 gets update almost everyday]

Can you maybe post your settings? I tried a few but the game i still laggy as hell.

 

[Sami 1999]

Can you maybe post your settings? I tried a few but the game i still laggy as hell.

What's your CPU? Rpcs3 is CPU heavy, the GPU doesn't matter much.

 

[Nisoley]

I have an Intel Core I5 6500, maybe it's too weak. I tested your settings (also with only 150% Resolution Scale) and ingame I have 60 FPS but it's the game is way too slow and laggy.

 

[Sami 1999]

I have an Intel Core I5 6500, maybe it's too weak. I tested your settings (also with only 150% Resolution Scale) and ingame I have 60 FPS but it's the game is way too slow and laggy.

Yeah it's probably too weak for Rpcs3. Even my i7 6700k has issues running heavy ps3 titles. But fortunately it's able to run games like fifa at full speed.

 

[Nisoley]

Yeah it's probably too weak for Rpcs3. Even my i7 6700k has issues running heavy ps3 titles. But fortunately it's able to run games like fifa at full speed.

Thanks for the explanation and the help. Too bad that it doesn't work for me because I played a little bit with the lags and I already know why I loved this game.

 

[miguelfcp]

Oh man, why did I only find this thread now!...great stuff guys. FIFA 08 and the World Cup 2010 game are two of my favourite football games of all time, the latter is a masterpiece really. I'm not sure whether my PC can handle this but doesn't hurt to try anyway.

 

[Sami 1999]

Oh man, why did I only find this thread now!...great stuff guys. FIFA 08 and the World Cup 2010 game are two of my favourite football games of all time, the latter is a masterpiece really. I'm not sure whether my PC can handle this but doesn't hurt to try anyway.

Yeah the current status about ps3 emulation is still hit or miss but the good thing is after few more years of developement, we might be able to play these proper ports on pc and by that time even mid range cpus will be good enough to run these emulators.

But the thing I'm interested more is about modding these games.

RTWC 06 and WC 06's file structure looks almost similar to fifa 09 and 10 of pc.

Whereas 07 onwards look kinda like fifa 11 pc.

fifa 07 and 08 files are in .rx2 instead of rx3 format, so that might be difficult to mod since there were no rx2 editors for pc.

 

[Marlon Anthony]

FIFA WC 2010 was a true love letter to football and is a sombre gift as the producer of that game, Simon Humber passed away around four years later. His influence was truly felt in the latter FIFA's up until around 14 when the true FUT poison kicked in on current gen.

I'd love to play WC 2010 & 11 in high resolution, Though as RPCS3 is more CPU intensive then GPU, I feel my 15 may not do it justice.

However i'm hopefull Xenia will support FIFA 06 RTWC as it's not so much a great football game, But from a preservation standpoint, It's the first true HD football game, The first one i played on my Xbox 360 that i foolishly brought on launch and actually has damn good art direction and presentation compared to every other FIFA until 11.