F1 25 locks some F1 movie crossover content behind its iconic edition, but its devs say those who don’t have it “shouldn’t feel like the experience is missing”

There’s an F1 movie coming out this year. Brad Pitt’s in it. As you might expect for a video game tie-in, F1 25’s following the real world sport in really embracing our little hobby about cars going round a track getting its Hollywood moment in the sun, but to get the full F1 movie experience in the game, you’ll have to buy its more expensive iconic edition.

It’s an interesting move, given that the movie – as with video game adaptations – seems to be viewed as something that could expand F1’s audience, rather than appealing strictly to an established audience of hardcore racing fans. So, I asked the game’s devs what went into this decision with elements of content that includes the ability to use the movie’s fictional team APXGP in Driver Career and MyTeam, and some bespoke live-service gameplay scenarios/chapters based on the events of the film.

“I mean, ultimately, timing on that more than anything,” senior creative director Lee Mather told me, “Timing being the movie comes out [on] June [25], and we can’t spoil the movie with our content. So, we’re supporting the movie with that, a really cool opportunity, but we wanted players to have access to some of the content when they purchase the game.”

“APX GP has a team icon that’s available from launch,” continued creative director Gavin Cooper, “But yeah, even within the scenarios we have a prologue that is available to all for all players [across the standard and iconic editions]. So, everybody can have a bit of a taster of the experience.

“If you don’t have it, it shouldn’t feel like the experience is missing here,” Cooper added when I asked him if standard edition players will notice iconic edition movie stuff isn’t there, “MyTeam definitely isn’t predicated on you having this content. It’s a nice extra way to play that content for sure. The scenarios themselves, they’re their own kind of broken off part of the game, and so they have their own area.

“So, again, it’s not like there’s an existing area of the game that’s being lessened if you don’t have access to that stuff. Obviously, you can see the value of being able to access [it] if you’re interested in the movie, [and] you want to be able to relive some of the events from the movie in the game.”

“It’s great content and it would be a real shame for us not to be able to work with Apple on that opportunity,” Mather added, “because we speak to a different audience to moviegoers.”

For more on F1 25, make sure to check out the multi-part preview of it we’ve had going up over the course of this month – here’s the first one on the big overhaul to the MyTeam mode.