Sneak preview of EA Sports' College Football 25

EA Sports previews College Football 25

EA Sports is less than one month away from a big release. College Football 25 is being released in July, and developers gave us a little teaser. The decade-long wait makes EA Sports College Football 25 one of the year's most anticipated video game releases.

ORLANDO, Fla. - College football fans are in for a treat this summer with the highly anticipated release of EA Sports' College Football 25 video game.

This week, FOX 35 got a sneak peek of the game, whose development team is based right here in Orlando. We were allowed inside the EA Sports Orlando office, but not in the employees' workspace – that's still confidential.

"It has been a long 10-year voyage for all of us. A lot of passion here, so we're pumped," said the game's lead producer, Christian McLeod.

McLeod worked on EA's last college football game, NCAA Football 14, which was released nearly 11 years ago.

"We lost an entire generation of people playing this game. So that's what we're personally excited about, is we're going to have a new generation now experiencing this for the first time," McLeod added.

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In College Football 25, all 134 programs in the Division 1 Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) are featured in the game. And for the first time ever, more than 10,000 real college athletes will be in the game. They've each earned $600 for their name, image and likeness to appear in the video game.

Photo: EA Sports

"I think we all had in our minds what we believe that number was going to be. What we ended up with exceeded that, that by far," McLeod said. "So we're just super excited to have real players in the game for the first time."

Developers made sure to include at least one unique feature for every team featured in the game. They started working on this in 2021 and even attended UCF games and flew out as far as Wyoming to soak it all in.

"We nailed a ton of pageantry, a ton of that on that priority list. There's still a ton left, so we're super excited. We've got years of content that we're on the cutting room floor that we're bringing in next year and moving forward," McLeod.

Photo: EA Sports

UCF Athletics took to social media this week to give fans a glimpse of how the Bounce House and Knightro look in the new video game.

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One of those pageantry features McLeod mentioned is the signature "U-C-F KNIGHTS!" cheer from fans during kickoff. That's featured in the game, as seen in clips shared by UCF Football's social media accounts.

Knightro looks great, too!

UCF has the 21st-best offense in the game, according to EA Sports' Rankings Week list. More on that below.

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A 10-hour early access trial for EA Play members kicks off July 16. The game is set to release for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on July 19.