Sorry, Pitt and Penn State fans, the excitement for the highly anticipated return of EA Sports' college football video game franchise will have to last for one more year.
EA Sports Vice President and General Manager Daryl Holt told ESPN in an interview that the re-launch of "EA Sports College Football" is now slated for a release in the summer of 2024, after buzz and anticipation built over the internet space for a potential return of the franchise in 2023.
"That's the best date for us to bring the game that we think is going to meet or exceed our player expectations," Holt told ESPN's Michael Rothstein, "and cover the breadth and scale of what we want in the game. We're trying to build a very immersive college football experience."
This comes a day after Matt Brown of the college sports business newsletter Extra Points reported that the game would be delayed, after its originally scheduled release date of 2023.
Though EA never officially confirmed that the game was going to be released in 2023, there was plenty of reporting around the topic regarding the game's return -- including from Brown -- after an ongoing nine-year hiatus. When name, image, and likeness policies were approved by the NCAA in July of 2021, the buzz began to swirl around the potential for the game to return with athletes' names in use, rather than the traditional rosters composing of the players being named by their respective positions and jersey numbers.
The last edition of the EA Sports "NCAA Football" franchise was released on July 9, 2013, with then-Michigan quarterback Denard Robinson on the cover. (If you want to feel old, Robinson is currently the Director of Player Personnel at Michigan.)
In an interview with DK Pittsburgh Sports on Tuesday, Brown shed light on the moved 2023 release date, and why the development of the game has been prolonged into a now-set release date in 2024.
The delay, Brown said, is attributed to a number of factors. There have been issues with supply chains and shortages of game-development staff that the video gaming industry has had to overcome as a trickle-down effect from the COVID-19 pandemic. This also fuses with the knowledge that EA wants to completely develop a new game from scratch, rather than applying a college football skin over the "Madden NFL" series.
Obviously speaking, a large number of developers from the "NCAA Football 14" game no longer work at EA, and that game was released on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles, whereas PlayStation and Microsoft/Xbox are on their respective fifth generations of consoles -- the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X, respectively.
"I can tell you, with a high degree of confidence, this game, this project, is not a 'Madden' re-skin," Brown said. "If the only thing they were going to do was just slap Ohio State and Pitt's helmet on 'Madden,' and add some slapdash recruiting engine and call it a day, the game would be out by now. And the fact that it's taking so long is testament -- I've talked to developers on the project who have said, 'we have to nail this. We have to completely rebuild the infrastructure because it's not like we can use the code from NCAA 14. That was two console cycles ago. None of the people that built it are here anymore.'"
But that doesn't mean that EA didn't try to overcome these issues, at least from the start.
"Every time that EA asked the schools for assets -- like, 'hey, I need your stadium renderings, I need audio that you have for your games, I need your helmet stickers, I need your uniforms, your mascot' -- they would say, multiple times, 'yeah, we're on track for summer of '23," Brown said.
A Pitt spokesman told DK Pittsburgh Sports that the Panthers have worked with CLC (Collegiate Licensing Company) over providing EA with assets, which include Panthers helmet stickers, stadium music (I.E. third-down music and marching band themes), and schematics of Acrisure Stadium itself. EA Sports plans on having every Football Bowl Subdivision teams in the game -- as of now, 120 have signed up. Rights to all 10 FBS conferences and the College Football Playoff have already been acquired by EA Sports.
(For those wondering, the popular "Dynasty" mode is expected to make a comeback in the game, as well.)
DK Pittsburgh Sports reached out to Penn State representatives with the same inquiry about their assets with respect to the game, but did not receive a response as of Tuesday evening.
Despite the stalling in asset acquisition, however, the delays within the game's release gravitate more toward developing product in itself, along with the acquisition of the NIL rights.
The new edition of the game, when ever it is released, plans to use players' real names. So, for examples, instead of Pitt's running back being named "RB #2," the name "Israel Abanikanda" will be coded into the game. Instead of Penn State's cornerback being named "CB #9," the name "Joey Porter Jr." will appear in the game and attached to the player.
This initiative, while yearned for among players (including myself) for years, was not possible pre-2021 -- or, in this case, from the release date of the "NCAA Football 14" game and going back.
That process in acquiring names, Brown said, is not as far along as one might think.
"From talking people in the licensing industry, trying to get names and likenesses of college athletes in a video game, compared to the pros, is an enormous pain in the (butt)," Brown said. "For 'Madden' to get NFL players, and they sign an agreement with the NFLPA, the union, a single entity. The union has already done all of the work to individually sign up people, and they can opt in or opt out of that, and the players in the union, with very few exceptions, get the same amount of money for being in the game. You can be an 88-overall (rated) left tackle, you could be a special teams guy that's going to be out of the league in two years, you're generally going to get the same amount of money from the game.
"It's pretty easy for the NFL to then get players in mobile shovelware games or other blow-off projects because they've already secured the licenses from the union. Same thing with the NBA, same thing with the WNBA, same thing with everything else. The problem with college is that there's no union. There's no single entity that's done any of these things, and the conferences can't do, either. So what has to happen is that, whoever the licensing agent is ... these all have to go basically sign up everybody individually. And there's over 1,000 college football players."
Don't expect EA to put all 85 players from each Division I roster in the game. That could be shrunk down to the ballpark of 55-65 players.
There is also the concept of plucking the players' names which have already signed exclusive NIL deals with other companies. There won't necessarily be a larger rate for one player to be coerced into allowing his name, image, and likeness to be used in the game, which could work for better or for worse in terms of that player simply being in the game.
This could all interfere with NIL collectives. Take Pitt quarterback Kedon Slovis for example, who signed an exclusive multi-year deal with Upper Deck for his marketing rights to autographs. That specifically, however, only includes, per Upper Deck, "the right to produce trading cards and exclusive autographed memorabilia and collectibles," so it was not a total and full-service purchase of the total benefitting of Slovis' name.
Some NIL collectives and deals are totalitarian and yield very little control or wiggle room for other NIL endeavors. Pitt and Penn State each hold multiple NIL collectives which could have roadblocking rules for naming rights within the game.
"If you are a football player at a really big-time school, like, for example, a Tennessee or an Oregon, you might have signed over your exclusive NIL rights over to a collective, which means that you cannot opt into the video game by yourself, because you've given your rights over to Aspire Marketing or to Division Street or something, so then that entity has to do it. The way that people who are in this space have described doing this to me is hand-to-hand combat. It takes forever, but it will eventually happen. It should not be a surprise that the structure of those deals have not been established. What I'm expecting here is you're going to probably see three or four different companies represent different groups of athletes to offer them an opt-in deal for the game."
