Quick Quotes: Late hits taken out of EA's Blitz due to NFL's stance on safety

“When we started working on this game we partnered very early on with the NFL and talked to them about what it is we wanted to deliver. We played the old versions of Blitz with them and we talked with them throughout the course of this entire product development cycle and, at the end of the day, the NFL felt like the late hits did not meet with their take on player health and safety, and they asked us to remove it from the game. Right now we have big action and big, over-the-top gameplay, but once the whistle blows there are no late hits. They understand that it’s not a simulation and they understand that it’s over-the-top, but at the end of the day they really felt like, with the messaging that they have, and with their stance on player health and safety, that it was something that was better left out of the game at this point.

"It still has the same over-the-top arcade experience that people remember from the old version of the game… it just doesn’t have the late hits anymore.” - Dave Ross, project lead for NFL Blitz to GamesRadar.