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

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:

• Colin Kaepernick
• Jalen Hurts
• Patrick Mahomes
• Justin Jefferson
• TJ Watt
• Joey Bosa
• Ja’Marr Chase
• Aaron Donald

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 game told GameSpot that Saber owns the Playground Sports series and 2K's involvement with past games in the series was merely a publishing agreement, not a change of IP ownership. But it comes at a time when 2K is presumably still working on its own arcade football game, announced way back in March of 2020.

We haven't heard a thing about that game in over two years, and in that time, Saber was acquired by Embracer Group. We've reached out to Saber and 2K for clarity on whether these parties are making separate arcade NFL games or perhaps 2K has dropped off the project that has become Wild Card Football. We'll update this story as we learn more.

Wild Card Football kicks off on October 10.