EA’s Next UFC Game will be the Best Sim Sports Fighter EverIt’s pretty easy to see why the most recent installments in the UFC video game empire were not exactly flying off the shelves. UFC 2009 Undisputed sold well with the license backing of the biggest MMA promotion around. Over 1 million worldwide copies sold in the first month made it a hit as far as any fledgling sports game series was concerned, especially when your previous attempts at the industry failed miserably (see: UFC Tapout series or Ultimate Fighting Championship: Throwdown).
A good enough start for a strong enough brand. There were issues online but hey, it’s a new series, right? Cut them a break until the next game. Unfortunately, we now know, UFC Undisputed 2010 (sporting a title change for some reason) arrived and we found out that online issues were maybe not just growing pains. The game had huge issues with leaderboard hackers and there were times of day when finding a match that was not just a guy who spammed one of the several game-breaking techniques was like eating an entire bag of Cheetos and pulling your hand out clean. It was frustrating and patches were slow. When patches did come for things like super created fighters, it only limited what the user could do in the career mode and essentially made created fighters a waste of time with such a limited time period to build up statistics in the mode.
Finally, THQ’s last ditch effort and easily least popular attempt at the mixed martial arts game genre, UFC Undisputed 3 arrived. Already, you may be noticing a trend that EA Sports has tried to stay away from. In three games with THQ, there was never a decided name. It was UFC [Insert Year] Undisputed, then UFC Undisputed [Insert Year], and finally UFC Undisputed [Insert Number]. How can any video game build a brand when the name is constantly changing? EA Sports tried it once recently with NBA Elite and guess where that game went? Into the trash can. This year, they’re returning with NBA Live again because it’s so easy to associate with a brand. Associating with a brand should easily be a top priority for sports gaming industry execs and yet we see none of that with THQ’s games. We see a company who struggled to keep servers live, struggled to understand what their customers wanted, and paid the price this year by having the UFC license transferred to EA Sports. Now let’s talk about EA Sports.
After UFC 2009 Undisputed, we saw EA Sports slide into the arena with a not-so-kindly received EA Sports MMA title that was, in retrospect, many hardcore MMA gaming fans’ favorite title. Of course, Dana White found issue with this, as he does a lot of things he feels could be in direct competition with his sport or his brand. Obviously before Zuffa’s acquisition of the Strikeforce promotion and the partnership with EA Sports announced this past year at E3, Dana did not have much good to say about EA Sports and even threatened fighters outside of the UFC that if they gave their likeness to EA, they would never work with the UFC. When you’re an MMA fighter looking to compete at the highest level and for the most money, it’s not easy to hear that you could be banned from the biggest and best organization because you signed a document saying you could have some specific pictures taken of you and maybe do some weekend motion capture work. Yet that’s what Dana White claimed in an interview with MMA Junkie, telling fighters if gave their likeness to EA, “You won’t be in the UFC.” He also had some tough words about EA Sports, saying EA “doesn’t give a [expletive] about mixed martial arts,” and that because of EA Sports MMA’s release, he’s “at war with them right now.”
Dana White at EA's E3 2012 press conference
Fast forward to 2012, after the release of the third and easily least liked installment of the UFC series with THQ, and Dana White is singing a very different tune. So much so, he walks out on stage during the EA press event at E3 and announces the partnership of EA Sports and the UFC. The people who do MMA best in real life and those who did it best in our virtual worlds are together, at last. A match made in heaven.
But that was not the end of the excitement, as today it was announced on EA Sports’ blog that the EA Canada team would be taking on the tall task of bringing the Octagon to our living rooms as a EA game for the first time. While they are not EA Tiburon (the fine folks who made the original EA Sports MMA), there is good reason to believe this will be the best sim sports fighter ever.
Let us start with the competition. When your biggest opponent in the mixed martial arts gaming world is UFC 2009 Undisputed, you’ve got a great opportunity to make your mark in the genre. When we talk sim sports fighters, though, we are not talking just UFC. We have to give some credit to what Fight Night has done as a series and how they’ve really revolutionized several things in sports gaming. Their original idea to bring striking control in Fight Night 2004 to the analog stick was unreal. Total Punch Control brought a new flow to sports games that wasn’t felt as much before when all we did was press buttons to perform actions. Total Punch Control was one of the better uses of the analog stick and certainly helped EA Sports make the entire controller worth using, not just buttons. As Fight Night evolved, we saw more and more exciting changes until the most recent installment, Fight Night Champion, where we saw full-on physics, amazing presentation, and fully-featured game modes on and offline take center stage. It was a love letter to boxing fans
Fight Night Champion was a love letter to boxing fans.
Now the UFC fans are waiting for the love letter, on the front step watching down the sidewalk for the mail man to appear. Today, I think we as a fan base, saw a glimpse of that old familiar blue uniform.
The folks that brought us the killer boxing title Fight Night Champion will now be handling duties for the UFC title.
EA provides some of the most stable online experiences in sports gaming, some may even say ONLY stable online experiences in sports gaming, and already have the tools to do roster updates on a level THQ was unaware of. We see weekly updates in titles like Madden and now our favorite fighters wont go months without an update after some big victories or losses (I’m looking at you, THQ, when Jon Jones became UFC LHW champion and was still one of the most dismally-rated fighters in the game).
We’ll get stability online, updating the likes of which UFC fans have never seen, and the backing of the biggest name in sports gaming. Sounds good to me.
EA is now looking at this following year as one that may be without the exclusive NFL license after it expires following the 2012-2013 NFL season. If NFL becomes a shaky revenue stream, they will need a new place to rely on quality sales year-in and year-out. So EA making this next UFC title great may not even be a good option, but a necessity.
For these reasons, and many more I’m sure we’ll hear about as development gets underway, I think it is too easy to say that EA’s next UFC game will be the best simulation sports fighter ever.
