New NFL Video Game Announced, Launching A Few Weeks After Madden

gamespot.com:

Football fans are well-versed in EA's long-held NFL exclusivity deal, helping Madden be the only NFL simulation game on the market for nearly 20 years now, and with no end in sight. But that deal doesn't cover other football games, even those using active NFL players, such as the newly announced Wild Card Football.

Starring Colin Kaepernick and a host of active players such as Nick Chubb, TJ Watt, and Aaron Donald, Wild Card Football is, in everything but name, the football analog to Saber Interactive's NBA Playgrounds and NFL Battlegrounds. It's even billed as being part of the Playground Sports franchise, making it the third sports or sports entertainment brand to get the arcade gameplay treatment from Saber.

Wild Card Football takes advantage of an NFLPA licensing deal, but not the league itself, so real team names and logos won't be featured. Still, the game boasts «hundreds» of NFL players on its roster, and it's up to players to form their own rosters, Backyard Sports-style. With hundreds more to be revealed later, the team did name-drop several NFL stars already, including:

Team jerseys and logos will be customizable, as will playbooks be. Games will be played in teams of seven, and players will be able to activate Wild Cards, in-game power-ups that will alter gameplay and provide cartoonish boosts, like summoning walls or invisibility.

The game has a single-player mode, local multiplayer, and online multiplayer with cross-play that spans all of its platforms: Playstation, Xbox, Switch, and PC.

Being a part of the Playground Sports franchise, it's interesting to see 2K is not attached, as it previously published the sequel to NBA Playgrounds, even tweaking its name to NBA 2K Playgrounds 2. A representative for the