With the 2023 Formula One World Championship season set to get underway in a little under two days, EA has started to tease this year’s iteration of its annual official game of the global motorsport series.
This year’s teaser comes over a month earlier than either the 2022 or 2021 titles, which were first revealed in April of their respective years. That could suggest that we’re looking at an earlier launch than the usual late-June/early-July window, or just that EA’s social media strategy is looking to tie the new game in with the season of the same name.
Either way, this season’s game follows the brand new naming strategy introduced last year, and will be called “F1 23“.
That aside, there’s not a lot of solid information to go on at this extremely early stage. We’re not quite sure what to make of the fact that Yuki Tsunoda’s name is missing from the image above (or that Valtteri Bottas’s surname is mis-spelled) but hopefully it’s just an error. Update (March 1): As the original Tweet has been deleted and replaced with a corrected image, we assume so!
The “fresh start” comment is particularly interesting. While that could easily be referring to the real world rather than the game, the real 2023 championship is anything but fresh.
Indeed the new cars are only slight evolutions of the 2022 vehicles — we trust less slight in some cases than others, given the porpoising issue — with only mild tweaks to the regulations, and there’s only one new race on a familiar-looking calendar, in Las Vegas.
F1 22 was also very familiar in places, with an evolution of the same Ego engine that’s underpinned the series since 2009 and, as revealed by the slower-paced Pirelli Hot Laps challenges, some very dated circuit environments. A fresh start in both departments would be most welcome.
It’s also noteworthy that EA recently introduced the 2023-specification Alfa Romeo C43 in time trial modes, ahead of the official F1 Testing at Bahrain. That’s the first time a new car has appeared in the previous season’s F1 game, and might suggest a move over to live service rather than yearly releases.
Whatever EA has in store for F1 23, we’re probably not going to have to wait long for more, so watch this space!
