EA has released a new sports game. But there is no Steam or PC version. This could be because EA doesn’t put much love into its PC ports.
Which game did EA release? With EA Sports College Football 25, Electronic Arts has launched a new sports game and it’s a real surprise, as the last college football game from EA was over a decade ago.
The number of players is particularly surprising: our colleagues at PCGamer report that over 600,000 people were online at the same time during the game’s early access phase. Incidentally, only players who have bought the premium edition for 100 euros are allowed to take part in the early access phase. Accordingly, EA’s revenue is likely to be in the millions.
Also surprising: PC players are not allowed to take part because EA has not planned a PC release.
Sports games have never been as successful on PC as they have been on consoles
Why isn’t EA Sports College Football 25 coming to PC? Nobody really knows at this point, because EA has not commented on the matter. They have only stated that a PC release is not planned. Anyone who wants to play college football will have to do so on the console, for better or for worse.
The most obvious reason for many gamers, however, is that the PC has never been the platform for sports games. Games like EA FC (formerly FIFA) have grown up mainly on consoles. This is also evident in how little time and energy EA puts into its official PC versions:
For many, the lack of a PC version of EA Sports College Football 25 is a reminder that the PC is simply not important enough for sports games.
On the other hand, Electronic Arts is not really doing anything to convince PC gamers of its sports games: Many gamers are simply fed up with playing an outdated version for older consoles on the PC that is also missing important features. Why buy the worse version when you can get the better version on the PS5 or Xbox Series X?
Incidentally, this is not the first time that Electronic Arts has been criticized for weak PC ports. A new “Star Wars” game was already heavily criticized for its catastrophic technology. To this day, players complain about problems and missing bug fixes: New Star Wars game for 70 euros starts catastrophically on Steam, players complain: “An RTX 3090 is not good enough for the game”