Joe Montana Football 16, the Unreal Engine 4-based football video game that Montana began teasing last year, is in development for mobile devices, developer Superstar Games announced today.
Damon Grow of San Francisco-area developer Superstar Games said in an E3 interview with Epic Games that the studio plans to launch Joe Montana Football 16 in "phases." The studio is focusing on iOS first, and will then bring the game to Android. Operation Sports reports that if the mobile versions do well, Superstar will release the game on PC.
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The video interview, which you can watch above, contains the first gameplay footage of Joe Montana Football 16. It is a full 11-on-11 football video game, and Grow told Operation Sports that Superstar Games is designing it to be more on the simulation end of the spectrum (rather than arcade).
As previous screenshots have indicated, Joe Montana Football 16 is an unlicensed football game — the teams in the gameplay clips are generic, not real NFL clubs. The names of players other than Montana himself are not visible, so it is possible albeit unlikely that the game features the NFL Players Association license for current NFL players.
Electronic Arts holds exclusive licensing agreements with the NFL and NFLPA that prevent anybody else from producing a football video game with real teams and players. Those contracts do not apply on mobile devices.
Superstar Games is currently in the pre-alpha phase of development on Joe Montana Football 16, said Grow. He told Operation Sports that console versions aren't in the works right now. The studio hasn't finalized a pricing model, and is currently planning to launch the game on mobile devices in the first half of 2016, according to Operation Sports.
