The revival of EA Sports College Football franchise (previously known as EA NCAA Football) has fans buzzing after years without an entry in the series. The last NCAA Football game was the 2014 edition, after a lawsuit over using a player's likeness led to a reevaluation of licensing arrangements. After several years, interest is high for the series to return, with an ESPN poll showing fans wanted a college football game back in the rotation. Now that EA has announced the franchise is coming back, there is one thing that the company needs to avoid to make the game successful.

College football video games had been a staple for EA as far back as 1993, when Bill Walsh College Football was released on Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. Every year after that, until 2013, some iteration of a college football title was shipped before the licensing issues brought the series to a halt. Some games in the franchise did not use some player's and team's actual names when EA couldn't secure the rights, but the resurrected EA Sports College Football announced that it has reached an agreement with the Collegiate Licensing Company to feature uniforms, schools, venues, and iconic traditions from over 100 NCAA-affiliated teams. With the game set to deliver what fans have been looking for, the game still needs to avoid the pitfall of many of EA's sports titles.

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When it comes to sports titles, fans like the team and player stats to reflect the most up-to-date data and metrics. If an NFL team makes huge improvements over the course of a season, the next Madden game should reflect that, and adjusting the stats to reflect the real world is one of the justifications for releasing sports titles annually. A few new features occasionally pop up, like Madden's X-Factor abilities introduced in Madden NFL 20. Sometimes, the player base dig into the minutiae of the game's systems looking for the latest changes, such as playbooks and tactics that reflect what coaches are doing with sports teams. But by and large, the changes made to a major franchise like Madden or FIFA year-over-year are often not significant enough to warrant the price tag for a new game.

With EA Sports College Football returning after a number of years away, it is a big event and something that feels special. It would subsequently feel much less special if College Football became an annual release by offering small, incremental changes between games. When the newest version of a sports franchise doesn't hit the mark, fans are quick to review bomb and express their displeasure for that year's game. Madden NFL 21 weathered the storm following its release, but some fans did question if a yearly Madden game is necessary.

So how does the upcoming EA Sports College Football game avoid this problem? Given that the game will be releasing exclusively on next-gen consoles, as long as EA builds a decent engine for the game, graphical fidelity will hold up year-over-year. If the game still looks and feels good, players will stick with it. And given that EA has a number of interesting AI-focused patents on the go, player movement and overall game sense could be very impressive in future sports titles like this one.

Instead of opting for a new release annually, which on next-gen consoles would likely be at the $70 USD price point, offering DLC bundles that would introduce new features and tweaked stats could be the way forward for EA. If new teams are licensed or after a good year the Florida Gators need to be bumped up statistically, players could opt in and purchase the DLC that updates these aspects of the game. This could be troublesome for online play, as playing against someone who has the DLC could lead to unbalanced matchups, so whether or not a system like this could work is uncertain. Not to mention, some would not be happy with microtransactions. In addition, EA Sports titles keep selling big numbers, so if the yearly release model is making the company money, there is little incentive to stop doing so.

Hopefully, after so many years away, EA Sports College Football can avoid the temptation to release annual versions of the game, instead focusing on delivering a quality game that can stand on its own for a few years before a revisit is required.

EA Sports College Football is in development for PS5 & Xbox Series X/S with an unknown release date.

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