EA Sports has confirmed that the full reveal of its long-awaited new College Football game will arrive in May, and reaffirms that it will release this summer for PlayStation and Xbox players. EA has also dropped a new hype trailer for College Football 25 that includes some very small (but new) looks at the game.
For fans of college football, this new title might just be one of the best sports games ever. It’s been well over a decade since the last entry in the series – NCAA Football 14 – but the wait is almost over. Thanks to today’s announcement, we can also start counting down the days until we see fully-fledged gameplay for the first time, but you can get some glimpses of College Football 25 right now thanks to this new trailer.
The new trailer shows off some blink-and-you’ll-miss-them snapshots of development footage, which includes animations or renders for mascots such as Penn State’s Nittany Lion, Big Al the elephant of the Alabama Crimson Tide, and what looks to be Michigan State’s Sparty. There’s also a work-in-progress shot of the Neyland Stadium, home to the Tennessee Volunteers. It’s not much to go off of, but after ten-plus years of waiting, anything about this new PS5 game and new Xbox game is exciting at this point.
The hype trailer also describes College Football 25 as “the game this sport deserves” – a strong and promising statement, but with how the most recent Madden NFL game was received, the proof of this pudding will certainly be in the eating. The game will be built off the Madden engine but “will not be a simple reskin”, sources close to The Athletic have claimed.
The reason the series went on its long hiatus in the first place was mostly due to a legal dispute about the use of player likenesses, and this has bubbled up once more since EA Sports announced it was reviving the series. EA was hit with a lawsuit last year in regards to the compensation it was offering athletes to use their likenesses in the game, but that suit was settled in November. With seemingly no legal barriers in the way, it now seems like full steam ahead for College Football 25.
While the release date window is still a vague “summer 2024”, it’s widely expected to arrive in late June or July. This is not only when the old games in the series used to be released, but previous comments claimed that EA wants to give other annual sports games – Madden, in particular – some “breathing room”. Madden typically releases in August each year.
So, this is huge news for college football fans, but there’s even bigger movements happening in the wider console gaming space at the moment. Sony recently revealed that PS5 players wouldn’t be seeing any new games from its “major” franchises for some time, while Xbox is looking to shmooze the creators of smash hit Palworld with additional support.