EA College Football 25 launches today for those who pre-ordered the deluxe edition of the game and got early access. And although the highly anticipated sports game hasn’t even been out for more than 24 hours yet, it’s already one of the year’s biggest games.
Pre-order EA College Football 25: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop
In case you didn’t realize, the last major college football game developed by EA, NCAA Football 14, was released in 2013, more than a decade ago. In that time, players have used mods and hacks to try and keep the aging Xbox 360/PS3-era football sim up-to-date with the real world. But now, after serving its community for 10+ years, NCAA 14 can rest as EA College Football 25 is out, and already extremely popular.
Technically, EA College Football 25 doesn’t launch until July 19. But like so many publishers, EA is holding the game hostage unless you pay a ransom to play three days early. It’s a scummy move, but it hasn’t stopped the new sports title from exploding online. According to various posts on Twitter, College Football 25 at one point had over 660,000 players online at one time. Later in the night, it looks like the new game hit 713,974 online players.
College Football 25 is already massively popular
To put that number in perspective, it handily beats out Helldivers 2, which hit a player count of around 485,000 shortly after launch. It’s also more than The First Descendant’s 264,000 players earlier this month. And that number of players is within spitting distance of Baldur’s Gate 3‘s peak of 875,000 on Steam last year. In fact, that 713,000 number would make College Football 25 the second-biggest game on Steam in the last 48 hours, below only Counter-Strike 2.
Meanwhile on Twitch, as of this writing, College Football 25 has 32,000 viewers. That’s more than Overwatch 2, World of Tanks, Apex Legends, and Rainbow Six Siege.
All those numbers are impressive by themselves, but it’s even more amazing when you remember that the game is only available to people who pre-ordered the expensive $90 version of College Football 25. Also, this game is only out on Xbox Series X/S and PS5, with no last-gen consoles or Switch versions, and no Steam or PC port.
It also appears that EA College Football 25 is leading to increased console sales, with more Xbox Series S consoles reportedly being sold in the last 24 hours than in any other period outside its 2020 launch. There’s also evidence that the Xbox Series S is selling like hotcakes at Walmart.
I expect that this game will only get bigger when it arrives for everyone on July 19. Circana games analyst Mat Piscattela predicts that College Football 25 will wind up in the top 20 most-sold games of 2024, and suggests it could even end up in the top 10. It definitely seems like people were excited to play some college football again, huh?
Pre-order EA College Football 25: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop
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