19 February 2024 , 14:00
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Update: It's official! The F1 24 release date has been confirmed as Friday, May, 31 in a brand-new trailer.
Original story: The release date for EA Sports F1 24 has been leaked, with the report suggesting that the new F1 game could be arriving a lot sooner than expected, with an official reveal said to be imminent.
With the 2024 Formula 1 season almost upon us, F1 fans will have to make do with F1 23 for now, which is the current, soon-to-be out-of-date iteration of the game. This happens every year too because, typically, new F1 games are released in June or July, several months after the new F1 season gets underway.
But, according to a recent leak from reliable industry insider bilbil-kun (via Dealabs) this year's wait might not be as long, because the report suggests that the F1 24 release date is Friday, May 31, 2024, with the game's Champions Edition reportedly set to grant early access to the game reportedly starting on Tuesday, May 28, 2024. With the F1 23 release date being Friday, June 16, 2023, the F1 22 release date being Friday, July 1, 2022 and the F1 21 release date being Friday, July 16, 2021, this leak suggests that the release date for the new EA Sports F1 game is seemingly being moved forwards two weeks every single year, with this year's game set to be released earlier than ever.
bilbil-kun's report also suggests that the official reveal of F1 24 could be imminent, with the insider suggesting a potential reveal date of February 27, which would make sense considering the opening race of the 2024 F1 season in Bahrain takes place just a few days later on March 2. F1 24 will likely launch on current-gen consoles (PS5 and Xbox Series X|S), PC, and previous-gen consoles (PS4 and Xbox One), as this has been the case with other EA Sports titles such as EA FC 24 and Madden NFL 24, but this has yet to be officially confirmed.
Sebastian Vettel warns of looming F1 ban and is "very worried about the future"
F1 24 is set to be the fourth official Formula 1 game to be published by EA Sports since EA completed the acquisition of UK-based developer Codemasters in 2021 for $1.2billion, with the publisher telling Mirror back in 2021 that it wanted to become an "Unrivalled racing powerhouse", with brands such as Need for Speed, DiRT, WRC, GRID, Real Racing and Project CARS already in its portfolio.
Speeding with the times
As an avid Formula 1 fan, who also loves F1 games, It's always felt strange that each year's new F1 game is typically released so many months after the beginning of the new F1 season, when excitement around the sport is arguably at its highest. After watching the first few races of a new season, the first thing I want to do is jump on the game and have a go myself, but it's frustrating having to play an out-of-date title for months while we wait for the new one. Of course, there are some valid reasons why this is the case, one of which is that there's no way to accurately gauge the fastest and slowest Formula 1 teams before the first few races of the season have happened, and this is really important to get right from a realism perspective.
But, I would love the F1 game series to follow a similar release schedule to the EA Sports FC series (and the EA Sports FIFA series before it) with each new game in the series typically being released around a month and a half after the major European football league's kick-off. With the popularity of Formula 1 skyrocketing over the last few years, EA Sports and Codemasters are doing the right thing by, seemingly, aiming to move the release date forward every year, but to truly maximise the popularity of the sport, and the game respectively, moving it forward another month or two would be a no brainer in my eyes.