EA Sports College Football 25 already looks like a significant success for EA, with millions of players picking up the game despite only releasing partway through July. We enjoyed our time with the game, which was in development for almost a decade. Even with all that time, EA says that "in the absence of AI, we simply would not have been able to deliver College Football at the level we did".
During its latest financial report (thanks, GamesRadar+), in prepared remarks, EA CEO Andrew Wilson says that the secret sauce is the combination of skilled teams empowered through the use of generative AI, a technology the executive has been quite bullish about: "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 AI and machine learning to deliver truly amazing entertainment."
Elaborating, it seems like this is the path the company will continue down, and we imagine much of the industry will, too. Wilson continues to praise what this controversial but undeniably effective technology made possible: "The reality is our teams are incredible, and we built workflows to facilitate that, but they were amplified and accelerated through AI and machine learning. We were able to take in a whole plethora of photo imagery across 11,000 players and build workflows out where AI and machine learning would generate heads, and our very talented artists would be able to come in and touch up and enhance those heads versus having to go through the full head development programs. 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."