Zack Zwiezen reporting on EA College Football 25 hitting over 700,000 concurrent players in its first 24 hours after release:

To put that number in perspective, it handily beats out Helldivers 2, which hit a player count of around 485,000 shortly after launch. It’s also more than The First Descendant’s 264,000 players earlier this month. And that number of players is within spitting distance of Baldur’s Gate 3's peak of 875,000 on Steam last year.

That’s pent-up demand, baby! And not only were these numbers huge, the game technically isn’t even out for everyone yet. The only people playing right now are those who paid $100 for the deluxe edition which came with 3-day early access to the game.

As someone who used to prefer the college football games over Madden and who has gotten depressed with how bad Madden games have gotten in the past 5-10 years, I really hope this one fires me up again.