EA Sports NCAA Football Will Return

The Ed O’Bannon case is finally over, and athletes have received their checks. Yet months later, a week into the 2016 college football season, we’re still without a college football game.

There are a number of people working to change that, but for now the 2016 season will pass without a college video game even though there are some looking to change that. IMV Gaming recently launched a kickstarter for their college football game Gridiron Champions this week in their quest to bring back ncaa football. You can checkout the trailer below.

In the past, we’ve talked about several notable figures and their thoughts on the NCAA Football franchise. Todd Howard spoke at the 2016 DICE Summit about how he’d love to get his hands on another college football game, saying that the game’s absence has left a hole in his life.

Now another industry luminary is weighing in on the subject, and this time it’s someone a bit more close to the topic at hand; Peter Moore. In an interview with IGN for IGN Unfiltered, Moore spoke for nearly an hour and a half discussing many topics.

During the interview, Moore fielded questions about his work at Sega and Xbox, to his current home at EA where he now serves as Chief Competition Officer. It’s an interesting interview that I’d highly recommend watching if you’re interested in Peter Moore and the industry, but there’s one part that stands out.

At around the 56 minute mark, Peter Moore delves into the subject of NCAA Football, which he says will return sooner or later.

“I think what happened is that NCAA Football became the lightning rod for bigger issues regarding college athletes getting paid for their performance in not only football, but all college sports,” said Moore, who served as President of EA Sports from 2007-2011.

“It was a sad day,” Moore said on the legal troubles the company faced as a result of their NCAA Football franchise. According to Moore, the legal fees eventually outweighed the potential revenue EA would make by continuing to publish the franchise.

“It was an unclear future for us. We unfortunately had to say, ‘We just can’t do this anymore.’ And one day I know we’ll be back.”

Even Peter Moore loved the franchise. “It was a really, really good game. What I really loved about it [was that] it captured Saturday afternoons all over America.” Moore also seems to take great pride in the work the team was doing on the game, praising the work that went into creating an authentic experience. “Not only did we have a great on the field experience, we took a lot of time to go to about every one of the FBS schools and capture the mascots and the environment around those stadiums and really brought that to life, and unfortunately had to step away.”

So there you have it! Peter Moore, Chief Competition Officer at EA Sports,loved the franchise and seems to take great pride in the work the team was doing on the game, praising the work that went into creating an authentic experience. So not only is a fan of NCAA Football, and he misses the franchise as much as the rest of us, as he stated in the interview he doesn’t “think” it will be back he KNOWS it will be back….that sounds like a vote of confidence if there ever was one.

It may be a while before we see the franchise again, but if Peter Moore feels that strongly about the game making a return, it’s safe to say that we definitely see that happening.