{"id":26577,"date":"2024-07-19T14:55:01","date_gmt":"2024-07-19T20:55:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/ea-sports-college-football-25-hits-the-market\/"},"modified":"2024-07-19T20:55:01","modified_gmt":"2024-07-19T20:55:01","slug":"ea-sports-college-football-25-hits-the-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/ea-sports-college-football-25-hits-the-market\/","title":{"rendered":"EA Sports College Football 25 hits the market"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"This
This combination of images provided by EA Sports shows the video game covers for the new standard edition College Football 25, left, and Deluxe Edition College Football 25, featuring Texas' Quinn Ewers, Colorado's Travis Hunter, and Michigan's Donovan Edwards. (EA Sports via AP)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

EA Sports College Football 25, among the most highly anticipated sports video games of all time, has flooded the market as gamers who waited more than a decade for the franchise\u2019s next installment rush to play.<\/p>\n

The game officially launched Friday, with EA Sports increasing its server capacity ahead of time to handle the crush. More than 2.2 million people had already played the game during an early-access period before launch.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo say we\u2019ve been blown away by the excitement, energy and anticipation around College Football 25 over the past few months would be an understatement,\u201d EA Sports said in a blog post this week. \u201cJust like you, our team has had July 19 circled for months as the culmination of so much work and dedication to build this game, and the chance to see it in players\u2019 hands for the first time.\u201d<\/p>\n

EA Sports\u2019 college football games used to be released annually, a cultural icon in American sports for much of the franchise\u2019s existence. The company froze future editions in 2013 when athletes began questioning why they weren\u2019t getting paid to be featured in the games.<\/p>\n

With athlete compensation rights sorted out in court and now allowed by the NCAA, EA Sports announced in 2021 it would be reviving the franchise. The video-game developer offered Bowl Subdivision players a minimum of $600 and a copy of the game to have their likeness included in it. More than 11,000 players accepted offers.<\/p>\n

The National College Players Association, a group that has long advocated for college players to be paid, celebrated the game as a milestone for its mission.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s exciting for me, my teammates, and my friends from other schools to be in the game and get paid,\u201d Washington defensive back and NCPA leader Dyson McCutcheon said in a news release. \u201cI\u2019ve been playing this game all week. I know lot of people before me fought for this and I\u2019m grateful.\u201d<\/p>\n

EA Sports has said its goal for the game was \u201cto feel like a love letter to college football and its fans.\u201d<\/p>\n

UCLA, Mississippi State, San Diego State and Colorado were among the schools hosting College Football 25 events this week. Across social platforms, athletes such as LeBron James, Tim Tebow and Michael Vick \u2013 even comedians Shane Gillis and Dan Soder \u2013 were livestreaming head-to-head matches in the game.<\/p>\n

Michigan running back Donovan Edwards, one of the cover athletes, said in May some of the best moments of his childhood involved playing EA Sports college football with his best friend.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust for it to be back, as well as to be on the cover of it, it\u2019s an awesome feeling,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The game\u2019s other standard-edition cover athletes are Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers and Colorado two-way player Travis Hunter. The deluxe edition features the backs of numerous players in a stadium tunnel, including Alabama quarterback Jalen Milroe, Georgia quarterback Carson Beck and Ohio State running back Quinshon Judkins.<\/p>\n

EA Sports\u2019 college football franchise dates to the 1990s. It grew in popularity in the early 2000s as gaming systems became more advanced, allowing for revolutionary game modes such as the popular Race for the Heisman create-a-player that was introduced in NCAA Football 06.<\/p>\n

That edition also featured historic teams, including the 1992 Alabama squad that Clemson coach Dabo Swinney played on.<\/p>\n

\u201cSleeping on me a little bit,\u201d Swinney joked about the 70 overall rating for his player, \u201cWR No. 88,\u201d which did, however, have a 91 speed rating. \u201cThey must have my going down the Hill speed. I appreciate the love they gave me on that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

most anticipated sports video games in history floods market after a decade of anticipation <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26578,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-26577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26577"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=26577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}