With the full reveal of EA Sports College Football 25 coming later this month, a lot of questions are swirling around the “full reveal” that is on the horizon. One question that has been on my mind is will EA Sports College Football 25 only come out on current-gen consoles? I think it should.
One of the major criticisms of this era of consoles has been the lack of “wow” factor with the majority of the games and their graphics. This in part is likely due to developers being forced to cater to consoles that came out nine years ago rather than just the PS5, PC, and Xbox Series X/S. Sports games get the shaft in this area more than most as a yearly title means publishers don’t really like to give up money on old consoles, and I would assume some of the licensing agreements they have with the sports leagues force them to include as wide an audience as possible.
EA Sports College Football 25 is unique in that it’s coming out for the first time in many years deep in the midst of a current-gen cycle, and it probably doesn’t have the normal licensing agreements that we would likely see from pro leagues. With that in mind, this seems like a good reason to just release on current-gen consoles.
However, we only need to look at Top Spin 2K25 to showcase another game that had not come out in years to disprove my point. While it’s a different publisher (and trying to reach a smaller pool of players overall), Take-Two decided to release that game on last-gen consoles on top of all current-gen consoles. In addition, we know both football games are being made by the same development studio, and we obviously know that Madden continues to share an engine with EA Sports College Football 25, and so it seems like it would be somewhat easy to port the game to current-gen consoles and last-gen consoles.
It’s hard to imagine EA would look at “free” money on last-gen consoles and not take it, and I get that some people either can’t afford or simply haven’t upgraded to current-gen consoles, but at some point these publishers need to pull the plug for the sake of the games themselves. Stagnation is never a good thing with a yearly sports game, and we’ve sort of been in that cycle of stagnation for most of this generation.
From graphics to gameplay, it’s been some of the lowest lows in terms of critical and fan reviews, and one of the most common refrains across all sports games has sort of been “why did I even upgrade my console?” Beyond better load times and frame rates, it’s been tough to justify the purchase in some ways — albeit I would exclude PC folks here who have had it better in recent years with some current-gen games finally coming to PC.
EA should look at this as an opportunity. A way to “wow” folks would be to actually use the full potential of these consoles. The consoles are even aging at this point, but I’m sure if the developers did not have to worry about last-gen consoles, they could still do a lot to impress us. The college atmosphere is already special on its own, so showcasing that in glorious fashion, whether that’s beautifully rendered packed stadiums, the sheen of the helmets, or impressive textures and frame rates, it would be another way to put a stake in the ground and really make sure EA Sports College Football 25 is a big hit and a reason to own a current-gen console.
Now, I have no clue what platforms EA Sports College Football 25 will come out on at this point — it’s really only confirmed for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S as of now — but I would guess PC is a “maybe” due to the potential issues with how modders would immediately get around anyone who was not licensed in the game. Still, I highly doubt EA Sports College Football 25 is going to be a hard sell to the college football fan out there. Even if it were only on two consoles (PS5 and Xbox Series X/S), it’s still going to do great. On top of that, Microsoft and Sony might appreciate EA giving a little juice to the console sales that are obviously slowing as this generation feels like it’s now on the back nine.
There’s so many good reasons to forego last-gen consoles since quality really should be the only priority for a sports game that is bound to stick around beyond this year. Assuming no major legal hurdles come up, are we really supposed to believe this game will do so poorly sales-wise it won’t be around again next year? And if it comes out and looks better than Madden, plays better than Madden, and simply makes people say “wow” about its graphics, there’s really no downside here over the longer term. After all, anyone who was there remembers the NBA 2K14 trailer.
That kind of memory matters. It buys you goodwill. It buys you word of mouth. It buys you credibility. It’s easy to forget that sports games really used to be a major selling point of new consoles. They were there day one when new consoles came out, and a lot of the time racing games and sports games were among the best ways to show off your new toy. A lot of folks who don’t play or really respect sports games call them “roster updates” or whatever else, but that sort of talk diminishes the impact sports games have had on the video game industry. Sports games are a bedrock of this industry, and I would argue that means those developers and publishers have a responsibility to keep trying to push this medium forward.
EA Sports College Football 25 obviously still needs to deliver with its gameplay and dynasty mode, but you want to get people in the door, and a lot of the time that comes down to graphics. Of course, money is money, so I do think we could still end up with last-gen versions of EA Sports College Football 25, but it would be a statement if EA did the smart thing and stuck to delivering a college football game on just current-gen consoles.
