EA has announced that its highly anticipated EA Sports College Football won’t be released until summer 2024.

Speaking to ESPN, EA vice president and general manager Daryl Holt said the long wait from College Football’s announcement in early 2021 is due to them building the game from scratch.

“That’s the best date for us to bring the game that we think is going to meet or exceed our player expectations and cover the breadth and scale of what we want in the game,” Holt said. “We’re trying to build a very immersive college football experience.”

He also assured to ESPN that College Football won’t just be a re-skinned version of EA’s Madden NFL series. “We want to make sure that it is distinctly uniquely college football,” Holt said. “If someone’s worried about it being a clone of Madden or something else, that’s not our intent and not the way we’re approaching this.”

Though no release date or window had been announced previously, internal documents reportedly revealed that EA was targeting a July 2023 launch, meaning the 2024 announcement will likely cause disappointment among fans who’ve been waiting for a new entry since 2013.

Holt did share a number of features coming to College Football though, confirming that fan-favourites Dynasty Mode and Road to Glory would return, letting players lead a school’s entire football programme and single athlete’s career respectively.

“Dynasty was on the top of everyone’s mind, on top of everyone’s list,” Holt said. “That’s been something that I think we are passionately focused on and want to make sure that we can get that as right as possible for year one with still foundational elements to build on as we go forward.”

Finally, he revealed that over 120 colleges will be featured in the game, though wasn’t able to share details on who had committed, who hadn’t, or if FCS schools or HBCUs would be included.

The return of College Football was announced in February 2021 when EA tweeted simply that “College Football is coming back”. The Madden NFL publisher entered a partnership with the United States’ leading collegiate trademark licensing company CLC to become the exclusive developer of simulation college football video game experiences.

The franchise had been incredibly popular over its ten year run from 2005 to 2014 but the NCAA chose not to renew the EA Sports contract over ongoing legal issues regarding the use of player’s names and likenesses in games.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.