Welcome back to another edition of the Campus Huddle, your home for news and information about EA SPORTS™ College Football 25! As we near the proverbial goal line of launching College Football 25, the Development Team wanted to take a moment to reflect on the incredible work done to get us to this point, the excitement to share the journey with you, and what you can expect from the team post launch.
From the time we decided to bring back a college football game, we identified three main areas we had to get right: authenticity, true college football gameplay, and immersive fan-favorite experiences. To do this, we knew it would take the right group of talented game developers, technology and toolsets that only EA SPORTS™ can deliver, and a whole lot of passion along the way!
Fortunately, that passion was easy to find in spades – we have many passionate college football fans creating this game, including some veteran developers of our previous franchise and many new faces who joined just for the chance to work on a sport and game they love. Some you’ve met along the way in previous editions of the Campus Huddle, and many others have worked countless hours behind the scenes to bring this game to life.
We also knew how challenging of a task it would be to authentically represent all 134 FBS schools and the intricacies that make each one unique – including stadiums, logos, team runouts, mascots, cheerleaders, multiple uniform sets including new and throwback versions, historic items, and more. That’s….a lot of reference materials. But we were up for the challenge! Our Sights and Sounds Campus Huddle took you behind the curtain into how we built out new technologies to process the thousands of files collected from schools, site visits, and broadcasts so we could recreate as many of the iconic atmospheres and traditions as possible.
On top of that, our groundbreaking NIL program gave us the ability to include up to 11,390 real players in a college football game for the first time. Add in another 5,000 or so models for coaches, fans, created players, and more, and that’s upwards of 16,000 character models we needed to generate. Traditional character creation systems – which typically use a scan truck as large as an apartment to manually process each player in person – were never going to be a viable option.
Instead, we developed a completely new approach by combing hundreds of head shapes that best represent the student-athlete population with copious amounts of hairstyles, skin tones, complexions, beards, brows, and more in a Machine Learning (ML) toolset that generates a unique representative likeness recipe for each student-athlete just from a single reference photo.
Not only does our approach to delivering this many likenesses bring you enjoyment when playing with the real student-athletes from your favorite school, but it also enables diverse and fresh content throughout the game. For our Dynasty mode fans, as you get multiple years into the mode with generated recruiting classes each season, recruits will have a ton of individuality in their looks, allowing you to really make that connection with your players.
To say we’ve been blown away by the excitement, energy, and anticipation around College Football 25 over the past few months would be an understatement. From the time we released the Teaser Trailer in February to the hundreds of pages of Deep Dive content showing you all the ins and outs of Gameplay, Dynasty, Ultimate Team, Team Rankings, Road to Glory, and more, it has been incredible seeing your reactions to all of it. All the conversation, the debates, the many memes, and sheer passion that makes the sport of college football so special, has our teams coming in each day fired up to deliver a game that you’ll fall in love with.
The passionate fans combing through every little detail in every word, screen, and video has been nothing short of awesome – even if you had let us know that a few things weren't exactly perfect. Don't worry though, the Cotton Bowl is already fixed for launch, plus the upper stands at Texas State's UFCU Stadium will be coming in a future update. So thank you all for that attention to detail, it’s continuing to make this game even better.
Just like you, our team has had July 19 circled for months as the culmination of so much work and dedication to build this game, and the chance to see it in players’ hands for the first time. The College Football 25 experience doesn't end at launch, let's talk about post launch. We are already hard at work on updates and content that are coming post launch to ensure we continually get closer to our north star of the most authentic college football experience possible.
Processing the massive volume of reference materials we received from schools along with thousands of player likenesses to create in just the few months since the NIL opt-in opened, plus rounds of testing and approvals, inevitably means there will be some slight inaccuracies at launch that we’ll be updating as soon as possible. Certain schools like Stanford, Western Michigan and Jacksonville State will show with outdated logos, and a small subset of players will have missing or incorrect likenesses initially. Be sure to keep an eye out on the College Football 25 Answers HQ home for a post from us that will share what we’re tracking for future updates.
The sport of college football has become increasingly fluid in recent years. We all witness the nearly constant roster movement with the transfer portal, logo updates, uniform overhauls, stadium renovations, conference realignment, and so much more. Our team is full of passionate college football fans who truly love this game and intend to get every detail right. We are committed to representing all schools and players as authentically as possible. Anticipate seeing updates to rosters, likenesses, ratings and more as needed after launch and throughout the season - for our very passionate Dynasty fans, you can hop in and play this week or feel free to wait for a roster update around college football kickoff for that immersive college football experience. Make sure to follow the Campus Huddle to get full details on updates!
It’s been 11 long years since all of us had a new EA SPORTS™ College Football game to play. We’ve said from the beginning of development that our goal was for EA SPORTS™ College Football 25 to feel like a love letter to college football and its fans. By now you’ve seen the great lengths we’ve gone to in order to make sure you can experience all the big plays, rivalries, cheers, chants, traditions, mascots, stadium environments and more that make college football iconic, and now it’s time for kickoff.
This is just the start of the EA SPORTS™ College Football journey, but there’s no better time than launch week to say thank you to you, our fans, as well as our partners, athletes, team and everyone who helped us arrive at this historic week. We can’t wait for you to get your hands on College Football 25, and after a long time coming, we can finally say…SEE YOU ON THE STICKS!
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College Football 25 launches worldwide on July 19th, 2024. Pre-order the Deluxe Edition* or the EA SPORTS™ MVP Bundle** and play 3 days early. Conditions and restrictions apply. See disclaimers for details. Stay in the conversation by following us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Answers HQ.
*Conditions & restrictions apply. See ea.com/games/ea-sports-college-football/college-football-25/disclaimers for details.
**Conditions & restrictions apply. See ea.com/games/ea-sports-football-bundle/disclaimers for details.