With EA Sports FC 25 now official, we're all gradually learning more about the second football game from Electronic Arts since its much-publicised ditching of the FIFA licence.
Several key new features have been revealed, including an all-new 5v5 mode (Rush), tweaks in the gameplay thanks to a new AI engine (FC IQ), and the addition of storage for duplicate cards in Ultimate Team, at last. However, there's one change that I'm even more keen on personally – one I've been requesting for years.
While it's not particularly huge nor game-changing as such, the removal of contracts in Ultimate Team is so overdue that I let out a little squeak when I found out. EA hasn't revealed if it's replacing them with something else, but like many other perennial UT players I haven't seen the point of player and manager contracts for years.
They've been little more than admin for a long time. Contract consumables are so plentiful in game, that just re-chucking them on players after their set number of matches have been met became an unnecessary task of button clicking.
The only exception has been for loan players, who can only be used a set number of times and not replenished. However, with the Festival of Football promotion running during the recent Euro 2024 and Copa America tournaments adding timed, rather than contracted loanees, change was already set in motion.
It's more than likely this will continue for loan players in FC 25, too.
Hopefully, EA will look at some of the other pain points in Ultimate Team (by far its most popular mode) and tweak them as well. The player filter system in the Club menu and the transfer market is also long overdue an overhaul, for example. Not being able to filter out untradable cards, leaving just those you can list for transfer, continues to be baffling.
And why can't you select player cards in batches and list them together?
These are, I assume, simple quality of life fixes. It'd certainly make the grind a little easier, meaning more time could be spent on the pitch than in the menu system.
There's also one thing that, while it shouldn't be dismissed quite yet, I'm surprised still remains... support for last-gen consoles.
Quelle surprise
I can see why – PS4 still makes up for almost half the 118 million monthly active users on PS Plus. And Xbox One owners will likely make up a similar share, if not more, for the rival brand. But, EA has hardly served either group with comparative versions of its footy game for a few years.
The last-gen editions have barely offered more than database and kit refreshes for a while – much like the version for Nintendo Switch – so I had an inkling that FC 24 could have been the last to serve another slice.
Not so, it seems, as EA Sports FC 25 has been announced for PS4 and Xbox One, alongside PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. There's another Switch outing too, but let's hope it embraces at least some new features this time around.
Or maybe we'll have to wait for Switch 2 (or whatever it's called) for real innovation in that regard.
As for the here and now, I'm certainly looking forward to hearing more on FC 25, as what's been revealed so far has been much-welcomed. After all, considering I play the current game for a couple of hours a day (at least), I'll be very happy if less of that is on administrative tasks going forward.
EA Sports FC 25 will be released on 27 September 2024, with those who pre-order the Ultimate Edition gaining access a week earlier.
As is traditional, there will also be a 10-hour early access trial of the game for EA Play members, also starting on 20 September.
