Sports game predictions are not always the most fun things to make anymore because a lot of the time if you take the stance of “just be negative” you’ll nail more predictions than not:
- We’ll get even fewer sports games in 2025!
- Microtransactions will invade even more game modes in 2025!
- 2K football will continue to not exist!
See, it’s easy! But that’s not fun, and our predictions are not here to harsh the vibes right off rip in 2025. Instead, I’m going to take a mostly level-headed approach to my predictions and throw out a handful of things I think could happen this year.
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We’ll Get At Least One More College Game Announcement
Whether it’s the smoke around the potential announcement of a college basketball game or the undeniable success of College Football 25, NIL rules may still be in flux but video game companies have to be seeing dollar signs. CFB 25 smashed records in 2024, and even if that is its high point due to a variety of factors, it still smashed those records on two consoles that do not yet have massive install bases like some previous generations.
And, to be clear, I said announcement. We also have to remember that CFB was announced way before it was ready to be shown, and I don’t think there’s any way 2K or EA would be ready to release a game in 2025. I do think it’s still EA or 2K’s show when it comes to this stuff (I don’t think a random third company will be entering the competition, but I’d love to be wrong!), and it seems like if it’s college basketball then 2K would obviously have less to do in order to get a game ready for release.
But I don’t think we should overlook either company’s potential avenues here. We don’t know how far down the path 2K got to releasing a football game, and the same goes for EA’s revival of NBA Live. Still, we know both companies did do something for each of those sports. How much of that development time is usable or matters is impossible to know unless you’re inside those studios, but I don’t think we should overlook the fact that either company could surprise us with a college game announcement.
If I had to rank the three potential options in terms of likelihood (highest to lowest), then I would do it this way:
- College basketball from 2K
- College basketball from EA
- College football from 2K
I don’t think there will be some sneaky college baseball announcement or anything like that either. We’re probably still in the stage where just the biggest sports have a chance for now.
College Football 26 Will Be On PC
To build off the above, again, College Football’s financial success blew past the wildest expectations. Lawsuits took down college football in the past, but I don’t think a PC port is really going to change the legal questions much at this point. To put it another way, even if some lawsuit popped up, it’s not the sort of lawsuit that would lead to the end of college sports games again. It’s a lawsuit that ends with a payout and EA continuing to create the series.
Instead, I think the bigger hurdle is whether EA wants to put resources into porting the game to PC. This does have a real cost to it (whether you want to accept that or not is your call!), but we have last year’s sales figures to show it would probably be worth it. On top of that, because the game is only on current-gen hardware, there might be more of an audience for the game on PC than a FIFA or Madden. Regardless, EA has shown it will put its best selling games on PC, and College Football is now one of its best selling games.
Even if it does not happen this year, this one feels inevitable.
Skate Is The Most Important Sports Game In 2025
This is more of a declaration and less of a prediction, but there’s a lot on the line here not just for EA but “alternative” sports games as a whole. It’s easy to forget but Tony Hawk and Skate were massive series that mostly just vanished after a certain point. The Tony Hawk series was revitalized via a remake of Tony Hawk 1 and 2 (and was fantastic), but there’s no new Tony Hawk game in the pipeline — if anything, we’ll get a 3 and 4 remake next.
We’ve had other skateboarding games and alternative sports games since the peak of that golden era, but there hasn’t been an SSX or Skate-level sales breakthrough in many years. The best chance at that breakthrough is Skate.
However, Skate is important not just in terms of potentially bringing back alternative sports games, it’s another test for “early access” as a concept for a bigger sports game. Undisputed is the other best example of that process, and while that boxing game finally left early access in 2024, that game was in early access out of necessity. It was a smaller studio where it just made sense to try and bring people along in the development process because it was another way to get funding.
With EA, this is something different. It’s going to be early access, free to play, and available on PC and console in 2025. These are new concepts for a sports game from EA. If Skate succeeds, it opens up a new avenue for EA to consider for its sports games. If it fails, well, it means one less way to “gamble” on the creation of a sports game. This would be a poor outcome for consumers.
With that in mind, I need the Skate team to keep it together.
The microtransactions can’t be total crap, but the bigger thing is the game has to draw people in right from the start. Early access can be rough, and there are plenty of successes and failures that have come from the early access pathway, but I’m not sure how much leeway a sports game will get from people. Skate can’t launch with bad gameplay that is hampered by controls that don’t feel responsive. It can launch a little light on content and creation tools, but Skate was accepted because of its controls and the way it separated itself from Tony Hawk. Games have launched in a rough state and then won people over during early access, and it’s possible to go that route when you’re free to play, but it’s not the position you ever want to be in as a studio.
Here’s to hoping Skate nails its early access launch.
But Also Rematch Could Be A Big Deal
When I was ranking the best sports game years of all-time, most of them had a thing in common: cheaper development costs. Those peak late-stage PS2/Xbox years were driven by huge install bases and developers who could make games with less resources.
Licensing is not going to get cheaper and that’s going to stop us from getting 100 licensed sports games ever again (which sucks), but if Unreal Engine or Unity can be shown to be viable paths to make sports games — and enough people buy in — we could clear at least one of those “cost” issues.
Undisputed was made in the Unity game engine. UFL and eFootball are made in Unreal Engine, and so is Rematch. But this is also a game with no licensing and just pedigree behind it. If you’ve never played Sifu, it’s a rad action game that is very hard and very well made.
With Rematch, you can compare it to Rocket League perhaps in some way, but the point is the development studio Sloclap likely could have made any number of games in a number of genres and chose to make a sports game. If they succeed while using an engine anyone can buy, maybe it gives some other studios out there the itch to make a sports game as well.
2K’s “Other” Games Will Have Good Years
With the last prediction, I think I want to plant the flag and say both WWE 2K25 and PGA Tour 2K25 will be good games this year. We’ve heard nothing on PGA Tour, but 2K is talking like it’s coming out in the next couple months. In the past, that might be cause for concern, but I think we’ve just seen a complete shift in how these major companies position their sports games. Marketing them and driving the hype doesn’t seem to be a priority anymore, at least not until we get very close to launch. I’m not sure if they just think the same groups will buy them no matter what or it’s harder to reach an audience through the normal hype cycle from yesteryear, but I don’t put a lot of stock into the quality of a game anymore based on how much is shown pre-release.
Instead, I’ll point to EA having a golf game again and 2K likely feeling some pressure to deliver now that competition exists. The last PGA Tour 2K came out before EA’s golf game, so this will be the first game where 2K can respond to that new reality. I think HB Studios is a solid studio and is up to that challenge.
With WWE 2K25, I think this is an easier call to make. That series has finally settled in (for really the first time in many years), and I think they finally have a formula that works for them. On top of that, 2K is investing more in the series after last year’s success, so the developers should have more resources at their disposal. I’m not as confident in the direction of NBA 2K (and the NBA in general, which is a bummer as it’s my favorite sport), but I think the other games in 2K’s library will be just fine.
Published: Jan 8, 2025 11:51 am