The amount of work that goes into a yearly Fifa and 2K is more than your run of the mill JRPG.
EA has at least 2 teams working on this franchise. The game modes are varied and well catered to football fans.
It could be better but its no way a mediocre game some you are passing it to be.

I beg to differ. I don't buy the FIFA games every year(the last one I have is 15) but the games are really fun to play and ultamate team adds a lot of more replayability to the game. This year even added a new story mode which is a huge change and I've heard nothing but good things about it. Because you don't enjoy a series or game doesn't(sarcasm) make it trash.

Shh people don't like the series so let them hate.(sarcasm)

Add another million from france and germany, and who knows how many from the rest of europe and latin america, first week worldwide is really huge

Great game of a great sport, deserved sales

those who don't like it can just go and buy something else

Oh, and the content in FIFA is huge and each game requieres a lot of work. Gamers who don't understand the sport or the size of these games won't change that fact

I don't blame them for adding just 2, it's like they did it to cope with the times. They even gave you a trophy for PLAYING with a women's team in FIFA 16 and I think even the smaller leagues theyv'e added have more demand 

I have the ability to play several types of games, form my RPGs to FIFA. Glad the series is doing well and love playing it with friends.

What games are better than this?

Here is some old info (2013) that I could find about the development team:
"About 7 or 8 years ago EA Sports Canada moved from single teams to a distributed model whereby there are central teams taking on a bulk of the development work (engine programming, art production, menu screen design and production, QA, Localization)
So we had a core team of about 35 people (for old gen) and about 70 people for current gen. This would be about 60% engineers, 20% designers, 20% managers. Then there was about 250 people who would contribute in some form. "
https://www.quora.com/How-many-people-are-in-the-development-team-for-EA-Sports-FIFA

http://www.ea.com/locations/vancouver

I know a lot of people who bought a console for FIFA only in UK and Russia. My brother bought PS3 for FIFA alone next day after I said him that it is better and more convenient to play on playstation and tv than on laptop. After some time he said he bought PS3 and FIFA and now it SUPER COOL to play. I was suprised why he bought PS3 while there is PS4 with better performance and better controller. And then he bought PS4 and the same FIFA 15 again. LOL. Now he buys FIFA every year on PS4.
Football is so popular in whole world as a sports and entertainment. Im buying Real Madrid t-shirts almost every year for 70-110 euros, paying for tv subscription mostly for watching football, f1 and nba. Im playing football in real life up to 2 times every week mostly indoors (in summer on grass). So despite Im not a big fan of modern footsims I still understand FIFA video game lovers and happy for them.