EA Sports College Football 25 is already a gigantic hit, even though it just came out today (July 19). EA Sports revealed that around 2.2 million people played the game during its three-day early access period.
The only want to get into early access was to preorder the deluxe edition, which cost $100. So this announcement implies that millions of people paid at least an extra $30 to get an extra 72 hours of playtime before anybody else on Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5. In addition, more than 600,000 players got in via an EA Play trial. It’s unclear if the 2.2 million number refers to both deluxe edition owners and EA Play subscribers, however.
‘This game is for the fans, and the response we’ve seen from across the collegiate landscape, athletes, creators, celebrities, and the core community has been nothing short of spectacular,” Daryl Holt, senior vice president of EA Sports, said in the press release.
This is a momentous release for EA Sports. It’s the first time EA has released a college football video game since NCAA Football 14 in 2013. At the time, the NCAA didn’t allow college athletes to get paid for their likenesses, so EA used fake names. This caused some friction between the two entities, so the contract wasn’t renewed. EA Sports announced it was getting back into college football in 2021. This time around, EA was able to use real athletes because the NCAA changed its position on paying its players.
College Football 25, by many accounts, is also an excellent sports game. Digital Trends’ Tomas Franzese called it “the best EA Sports game that I’ve played in years” thanks to new modes that allow for more customization and deeper gameplay. It also looks fantastic thanks to the Frostbite Engine.
In other College Football 25 news, according to multiple reports, the players were paid a minimum of $600 for their name, image, and likeness, referred to as NIL. They also got a free copy of the game. This includes every player who submitted, says the New York Times, while those who were featured more prominently in the game’s marketing or were on the box cover were paid more. That amounts to around 14,000 players, although less than 100 will be featured.
“Ninety-plus percent of these athletes will never have [another] NIL opportunity … And the fact that they can be in a video game is just cool,” Sean O’Brien, head of strategic partnerships at EA Sports, told the New York Times.
