http://www.sportsnet.ca/mma/2012/06/05/ufc_ea_sports_video_game_deal/ There’s no such thing as a burned bridge when it comes to good business. The UFC announced Monday that parent company Zuffa, LLC, had reached a licensing agreement with Electronic Arts to produce and distribute video games bearing its brand. The new multi-year, multi-product partnership will provide EA the exclusive rights to develop UFC video games, which will be developed and marketed under the EA Sports brand. The deal ends the UFC’s relationship with THQ, which previously held the exclusive rights to UFC video games and whose third edition of its UFC Undisputed title was released in February. “We’d like to thank THQ for creating some of the most critically acclaimed sports video games of this console generation, and we’re excited to enter a new relationship with EA that will help us deepen our connection with fighting fans around the world,” UFC president Dana White said in a release. “There’s no one better at creating authentic sports video games than EA Sports, and we’re excited to have a partner who shares our vision of deep, connected and multi-platform global game experiences.” White had been vocal in the past about the fact that the UFC was turned down by EA when it tried to land a deal with the video game maker. He said EA wasn’t interested in mixed martial arts -- prior the boom in popularity that the sport saw beginning in 2007 -- which is the reason the UFC signed a deal with THQ. He was even more critical of the company when it then announced its own MMA game in 2008, EA Sports MMA, which was released in October 2010 and featured fighters primarily on the then-rival Strikeforce roster. The EA game was evidently developed in response to the success of UFC Undisputed, which debuted in May 2009.
A lot of people seemed to thing that EA's MMA was a better simulation of the sport that THQ's Undisputed, but that might be due to MMA hipsters just wanting to put everything over Zuffa. I am a huge fan of EA's FIFA series and I know a lot of people like the NHL series as well. Madden is a bit cloudier with people complaining that it is the same game every year. Curious to see what EA's UFC will be like. For the record I was lukewarm on Undisputed 2009. The game itself played a bit cheap and the menu screens/navigation were clunky and obtuse.
