EA Sports College Football is one of the most highly-anticipated upcoming titles currently in development, and for good reason. We haven’t had a new college football video game to play since NCAA Football 14 released all the way back in 2013. Since then, the series has been shuttered due to legal issues from the NCAA’s refusal to allow athletes to make money off their names, image, and likeness.
However, we’ve seen some huge changes in college football since 2013. Not only are players able to make money off their NIL now, but the sport itself has added a playoff and a new round of realignment just took place. While plenty of people still pop in NCAA 14 thanks to the memories, the age in the game is clearly visible when. Thankfully, we won’t have to wait much longer for a new college football game, because back in February, EA officially announced that it would bring back its college football series under a new name … eventually.
Video game development is difficult, and predicting it is never easy, but if we take into consideration that development on EA Sports College Football began around when it was officially announced, we can safely ballpark a potential release date as 2023. That would give the team working on the game a little more than two years to develop and release the game. This timeline would also match up with a report from Matt Brown of Extra Points that the development team has been aiming for a 2023 release date.
On Thursday, we got confirmation that EA is aiming for that window from Cory Moss, the CEO of College Licensing Co. Moss told Brandon Marcello of 247 Sports that the hope is for a summer 2023 release date for the upcoming game.
EA Sports is aiming to launch its new college football video game in the summer of 2023. “That’s the hope,” says Cory Moss, CEO of Collegiate Licensing Co. #CFB #EASports pic.twitter.com/oQToo4Tfz9
— Brandon Marcello (@bmarcello) December 9, 2021
Obviously, everyone wants a new game to come out as soon as possible, and the dev team is assuredly hard at work as we speak, but until the game is given an official release date, we probably want to be cautious on assuming that 2023 is locked in. Any number of things could happen between now and then that could delay the game beyond an expected release time — for example, finding a way to get all of the new real-life players into the game is a challenge in itself.
All of that said, let’s choose to be positive and hope that in 2022, we’ll get some more information from EA itself on an anticipated release date.