EA Sports FC, formerly known as FIFA before the eponymous organization cut ties with Electronic Arts, could soon finally have some competition in the virtual soccer market. Having snagged one of FIFA‘s former executive producers, publisher 2K now aims to enter the fray and provide players with a worthwhile alternative. That is according to Eurogamer, which writes that 2K Sports has founded a new game development studio called Small Axe and placed Aaron McHardy, FIFA‘s former executive producer, at the helm. McHardy has worked at EA for over 17 years before leaving the company, spending most of that time working on its golden goose of a soccer franchise. Writing on LinkedIn, McHardy said the studio will work on “2K’s next AAA sports game.” Though the sport in question wasn’t outlined either by him or by 2K, but McHardy’s background is a very telling sign if anything. EA Sports FC has dominated the soccer field for many, many years now. Image via EA Sports Still, 2K’s most successful sports franchise is undoubtedly NBA 2K, which is also essentially a monopoly in its own right. Sports games in general are usually few and far between, the big ones I mean, and each individual sport is often dominated by a singular title. That wasn’t always the case in soccer, though. Once upon a time, KONAMI cared enough about competing with EA Games by making Pro Evolution Soccer, which, on more than one occasion, even outsold FIFA despite the latter’s heavy branding. EA would go on to pick up untold licenses from under KONAMI’s feet, leaving PES without the most prominent and well-known names in soccer. This would eventually lead to the downfall of KONAMI’s soccer endeavor, and while it’s still clocking in solid numbers as eFootball, PES is little more than a footnote in the genre at the moment, leaving EA, even without FIFA, the reigning soccer behemoth. And that itself has led to loads of horrors for the end user, since, without competition, EA is allowed to do basically whatever it wants. I mean, if you want to play a soccer game, you kind of have to opt for EA Sports FC, and with 2K in the mix, everyone only stands to gain.The post EA Sports FC finally gets a real rival as 2K hires one of its former executive producers appeared first on Destructoid.