CFB Gets Roster Update, EA Reports Lower Revenues, and More

Happy Spooky SZN everyone, we’re going back to an old-school newsletter format today as I felt it was a good week to catch everyone up on anything they may have missed in sports gaming.

This week had more news than I expected, and it includes a big update to College Football 26, and some general industry tidbits from EA and Microsoft.

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CFB Gets First Major Roster Update

Let’s start with the aforementioned College Football 26 update. EA’s first major roster update includes more than 4,500 rating adjustments. A lot of folks have been clamoring for this update, and while it does come later than the first major one last year, it’s good to see regardless.

If you want to take a deeper look at all the ratings, Jerry over at TeamCrafters has the update up as well. This update does also include some roster additions, albeit not nearly as many as last year (but there aren’t as many players missing as last year either).

Some new uniforms were also added: Arizona’s Sandstorm uniform, Oregon’s Shoe Duck uniform, UCF’s Space uniform, and Appalachian State’s Corn Cob helmet.

EA’s Revenues Shrink

The good news on the sports side for EA is that sales for Madden and EA Sports FC are up. The bad news is EA’s overall revenues are down 13 percent year over year. Ultimately, this comes down to a couple factors, including CFB not being able to reach its lofty sales totals from last year.

CFB 25 was not just a hit sports game, it was one of the biggest games of the year period last year, so it was probably not reasonable to expect a college football game to reach those heights again, so this is not that shocking.

What’s also not ideal is that, at least on Steam, Skate is losing a lot of its audience. We don’t know how many players in total have left since a very strong launch for the long-dormant franchise (Steam numbers don’t account for console players or people playing on EA’s app, after all), but it’s probably not great that it has lost 80 percent of its users from its peak totals on Steam.

Games like Skate are going to go through these ups and downs as most free-to-play games do, but it’s also undeniable that EA has not delivered enough to the experience post-launch. Skate is still very fun to play, but for those who want to play it all the time, it doesn’t necessarily give you a reason to constantly check back in right now.

Either way, sports games continue to carry the load for EA (especially in Q2 each year). However, it’s also worth noting who knows how many quarterly reports we really have left before EA goes private and no longer needs to talk about this stuff in a public-facing way.

Microsoft Continues Being Weird

Some took this week’s latest Microsoft news as a positive that they were confirming they had no intention of leaving the hardware space, but I still think a lot of this stuff just sounds like a way to pretend “this was the plan all along” when really they are failing with Xbox and are looking for a new way to manage all the gaming IP they bought.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella had this to say in an interview:

This just strikes me as saying Games For Windows all over again, except now they’re just saying they want to be Steam (while also probably jamming crappy ass Copilot and some other junk into it). No, it won’t be the mess that GFW was, but this could not have been the plan all along because you don’t have a major hardware arm of the company to end up just doing this sort of thing.

They’ll still be making something hardware-related that is “official” that has its Xbox app on it down the line, but more or less it just sounds like yet another company that wants to try and pretend it has any chance to come at Steam, which Microsoft has already been trying to do anyway, right?

Nevertheless, I’ll keep holding a candle for Xbox as long as it keeps kicking because the Xbox 360 remains one of my favorite consoles of all-time.

Elsewhere, Microsoft reported a 30 percent drop in hardware sales between quarters year over year, which I’m sure has nothing to do with any of this news.

Sports Games And Dysfunctional Online Modes, Name A More Iconic Duo

EA and 2K are dealing with their own subsets of drama as well. FC’s Clubs has been having connectivity issues:

I will always say Clubs is the most fun way to play EA FC, but man does EA make it hard to love the mode at almost all times. If you have a good group to play with it still makes it worth all the issues most of the time, but this is a mode that should be much more enjoyable than it is.

EA was not clear what was causing the issues, but they are actively working on fixing them — whatever they may be.

With NBA 2K, stop me if you’ve heard this before, but fans are angry about the microtransactions in MyTeam. The latest hashtag is #PlayersOverProfit and, I mean, yeah that’s true.

NBA 2K’s MyTeam is offensive when it comes to microtransactions on a level even beyond its MyPlayer mode. At least with MyPlayer you get tangible stuff from it. You’re guaranteed very little after spending money in MyTeam on packs.

Every card mode in EA and 2K’s games is a seedy gambling den, but MyTeam is truly offensive because the auction house also sucks, so it’s hard to even make “profits” as a user while trying to minimize the amount of money you spend.

Fans are mad about the crappy auction house, and they’re just exhausted by how much time (and money) needs to go into the mode to get most of the best cards. They’re hoping this latest protest gets more of the community to band together and forces 2K to take notice.

Madden Roster Update

Lamar’s back baby! Before TNF, EA posted its roster update for the week.

Drake Maye’s +2 boost to an 85 OVR continues his upward trend towards star status, and oh god, the Pats are back and I hate it.

Patches, Patches, Patches!

UFL, Undisputed, Retro Bowl, and Football Manager all got updates this week. I can’t say I’m tracking any of these games that closely right now, but UFL’s update does seem like a big one.

I don’t know a single person who is playing this soccer game, but it continues to get regular updates, with this one including new ball physics. In addition, over 1,300 new players were added to the game, so they’re continuing to get more licensing.

Undisputed’s major 2.0 update is out. I’ll have to poke KG and see if he wants to write about this (perhaps for next week’s newsletter). It includes crossplay and a couple new fighters — as well as various gameplay updates.

NFL Retro Bowl 26 also got an update that adds some international field designs, plus a Player Development mode.

NFL Retro Bowl 26 is exclusively available on Apple Arcade, and I highly recommend checking it out as it’s a great mobile experience with full NFL licensing.

Finally, Football Manager 26 is nearing its release date, and Sports Interactive released its final beta update before that hotly anticipated launch. You can read the full list of fixes here.

I know there is a lot more focus than usual on this game after it cancelled last year’s edition, so it will be interesting to see how fans react to the full release next week.

GAMES, GAMES, GAMES!

If you’re poking around for some random stuff to play, well, here’s a couple things that just launched (and one thing that was announced).

If you’re one of 27 people with PlayStation VR2, Baseball Dreams VR released this week:

I have somehow never played a VR baseball game, but it does feel like that should be a very good fit for VR. I can’t stand playing anything in VR for too long, but I’d be down to take some hacks.

We also got Superball:

I’m going to stick with Rematch, but this is a 3-on-3 game with unique characters that have unique skills (so a “hero” game with a ball).

PlayStation Plus is adding EA WRC 24 to its lineup for November, so be sure to add that to your library once the store is updated in the days ahead if you’re a PS Plus subscriber.

And the last bit of games news this week is the announcement of NBA The Run, a 3-on-3 online arcade game.

First impressions are the art style is pretty cool, but the emote-less faces are FREAKING me out. It’s just a lot of dead eyes and dead stares. It’s the stuff of nightmares, as all I can think about is waking up from a dream only to be met by the cold stare of Giannis towering over me while spinning a basketball (think of one of multiple scenes in Weapons if that helps).

This game is set for release in 2026, and here’s the description from the Steam page:

The NBA is the most giving with its licensing for video game projects, but that also means there can be some real stinkers with the NBA and its players on it. We’ll see how this one goes, but I’m not getting my hopes up as of yet.

Until next time y’all. And, as always, thanks for reading.

-Chase