EA CEO on AI’s huge role in EA Sports College Football 25

EA Sports College Football 25

Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson has said that EA Sports College Football 25–the American Football simulator game– wouldn’t have been possible without EA teams’ harnessing the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning. Electronic Arts used AI to create likenesses of 11,000 players in the sports sim EA Sports College Football 25.

In a prepared remark for investors in EA’s Q1 fiscal year 2025 earnings call, the EA CEO said, “This new College Football experience is an impressive creative and technological achievement. Creating 150 unique stadiums and over 11,000 player likenesses couldn’t be done without EA’s deep history of being a technology leader, and by our incredibly passionate and talented teams harnessing the power of A.I. and machine learning to deliver truly amazing entertainment”.

When it comes to the EA games catalogue, EA Sports College Football 25 is dwarfed by franchises like EA Sports FC and Battlefield. Still, College Football 25 is a big deal in the United States, with “hundreds of thousands of people” getting early access, as per a report by Softonic.

The AI in EA Sports College Football 25 is also trained on real football data. Amongst several AI-influenced features, College Football 25 adds AI logic for the Read and Pitch keys, including new, more realistic "Read Key" animations. For example, Read Keys are “more likely to stay home and play the quarterback when on the wide hash marks. Conversely, when the offense is close to the first down, they'll play the dive back more often,” says the game website.

In College Football 25, the AI teams show their “distinctive identities in their Tempo usage”. For example, football teams like Oklahoma “adopt an up-tempo strategy for most of the game, possibly calling for a shot play after securing a first down in certain areas of the field at a fast pace. Conversely, teams like Michigan may only resort to this move following a significant play to jump start the offense when losing".