It's been a long time coming, but EA's FIFA series is finally putting female players into the game.

FIFA 16 will include 12 of the top women's international teams--including Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, England, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Spain, Sweden, and the USA--and will be playable across multiple modes. Whilst those modes are yet to be confirmed, EA has stated that women's teams will not be able to be played against men's teams in order to remain "authentic" to real-world football.

The inclusion isn't a mere reskinning of existing players, however. According to FIFA 16 producer Nick Shannon, new technology--including animations, body types, and even hair physics--had to be retooled or created from scratch to accommodate the introduction of female players.

Why is now a good time to introduce female players?

It's the right time because we're able to get the technology in place to do it properly. It's as simple as that.

Is this something that you're looking to expand in future features?

We'll see. I mean we obviously don't really talk about the future--we're still focused on what we're doing this year. Beyond that we'll have to wait and see. We'll again listen to feedback and what people liked and didn't like about it. Then we'll go from there. We're just really excited to be bringing it to players.