EA Sports’ College Football 25 marks the return of a beloved sports sim franchise, and according to Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson, the game couldn’t have been made without developers utilizing machine learning and AI-powered technology.
In an investor call on Tuesday, Wilson said in prepared remarks that “creating 150 unique stadiums and over 11,000 player likenesses [for College Football 25] 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 AI and machine learning.”
Wilson later clarified those remarks, saying that player likenesses — which he called “heads” — and stadiums weren’t purely generated by AI and machine learning. EA’s “very talented artists” supplemented that algorithmic work by touching up and enhancing the players likenesses, Wilson said, as opposed to “having to go through the full head development programs.”
Wilson noted that “in any given year, [EA] will develop about 500 to 1,000 star heads” for one of its sports games. The 11,000 that were needed to represent the players featured in College Football 25 was obviously a much bigger challenge.
“In the absence of AI we simply would not have been able to deliver College Football at the level we did, even though we’ve given the team many, many years in development,” Wilson concluded.
“It was a decision that we made because we were really building the franchise for the future,” Wilson said. “It was the first time we had done it in 10 years and the level of gameplay and the level of visual fidelity that we did was a combination of many years of work of our incredible teams amplified and accelerated by AI, something that we just wouldn’t have been able to do as little as two or three years ago.”
That reliance on AI and machine learning won’t be limited to College Football 25, Wilson noted. The EA CEO said that the follow-up to this year’s EA Sports FC 24, the replacement for its FIFA franchise, will also use AI tech.
“Following a historic brand relaunch embraced by players, fans, and partners the world over, EA Sports FC 25 is going to be a giant step forward,” Wilson said. “FC 25 will feature more innovation, as well as more realistic and authentic gameplay driven by enhanced tactical sophistication using AI and real-world footballing data.”
College Football 25 is available now on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.
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