EA Sports College Football 25 Is Already Being Played By Millions Before Launch

Summary

Normally, we’d say “In case you haven’t heard,” or “In case you missed it,” but there’s a good chance you’ve already heard aboutEA Sports College Football 25. It’s the successor to the now defunct NCAA college football series, and after a decade-plus of waiting, it’s finally out acrossPS5andXbox Series consoles. But in the leadup to its July 19 launch,it had an early access period via its Deluxe and MVP Edition Bundles, and it turns out, that period was a rousing success.

Actually, success might be an understatement.

That’s because, on Friday,EArevealed that over 2.2 million people (yes, a million) participated in the early access period for College Football 25. An additional 600,000 people played the EA Play trial.The cheapest version to get into early access was $99.99, meaning, at the very least, 2.2 million people coughed up $100 to play the first college football title in years.

The Numbers Don’t Lie, And They Spell Success

If your jaw has already dropped before, then wait until you hear this.

According to Mat Piscatella, Executive Director and Video Game Industry Advisor at Circana, a measurement firm, on July 17, EA Sports College Football 25 marched into the No. 4 spot among PlayStation 5’s most active titles in the U.S., per data from the firm’s player engagement tracker. It sat behind Call of Duty HQ, Fortnite and Grand Theft Auto V. But over on Xbox, it ended the week in the No. 3 spot, with just COD and Fortnite ahead of it. Again, that’s just counting early access.

And somehow, the numbers don’t stop there, because you should know that the game is already smashing its own records. That’s because the last college football title, EA Sports NCAA Football 14, sold around 1.5 million copies,per ESPN. It thenwent on to be a highly sought after game on the secondhand market due to the stoppage of NCAA games. Already, again, only via early access, this game is at 2.2 million copies.

It’s not unreasonable to expect this game to potentially even outbeatCall of Dutyby year’s end as 2024’s best-selling title. Because as Piscatella notes on Twitter, way back in 2006, NCAA Football 2007 was the No. 3 title of that year, just behindGears of WarandMadden.

In other words, this popularity isn’t necessarily out of nowhere. In fact, it’s largely been here all along, it just took a decade between releases for it to explode to even greater heights. The heights are so massive that 2.2 million people were willing to shell out at least $100 to play the game a couple of days early. That’s a lot of millions in revenue.