If you were to talk to Americans who watch sports and ask them what the “best sport to watch is,” most people you talk to would likely say football. But most important, many of them would say College Football. While it’s true that the NFL is the highest level of play, there’s something about collegiate sports that inspires the nation in ways that the rest of the world doesn’t understand. People love rooting for their alma maters and the young stars that can change the game at the pro level. That passion eventually led to EA Sports College Football being made for several years.
Then, they stopped for various reasons, only for them to promise that it would come back. The image above was from that promise. However, since then, there have been precious few updates about EA Sports College Football since. However, during a financial call, as noted by VGC, EA CEO Andrew Wilson addressed the game’s status and noted how the crew was working hard to get everything to where it needed to be.
“The team’s doing an incredible job building out what will be the future of College Football. Gameplay is really coming together, and really capturing all the action of pageantry, and the difference in college football versus the NFL. I feel really confident in what the team’s doing.
We’re working through the license situation broadly – as of now, we’ve got many if not most of the schools licensed as part of our licensing platform.”
A key hurdle they’re working to clear is to not only get all the major colleges on board and the various third parties associated with them. Another issue is that of the players.
New rules around the “Name, Image, License” opportunities mean that if college players are named in the game, they can get a cut of the profits. So the question of how to include them in the game, if they include them at all, must be discussed.
The key thing here is to get the game back up and make it the success it used to be. The game used to be part of a 1-2-punch that EA Sports had as it would launch its college and NFL games close to one another so gamers could enjoy the seasons virtually and on their TV.
Many gamers and fans want the college video game back, and it will definitely boost EA’s profit margins if they do the reboot well.
