EA puts Fight Night on hold in favor of UFC

EA Sports head Andrew Wilson says the Fight Night team has been almost entirely redirected to work on UFC, after the company grabbed the rights from THQ in June of last year.

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In the sports sub-genre of "men hitting each other," you might have noticed Fight Night Series has gone a bit quiet lately. EA Sports head Andrew Wilson says that's because the company has refocused that team towards its recent acquisition of the UFC rights.

"Right now, a great portion of the core of the Fight Night team are actually the team that are building UFC," Wilson told IGN. He added that the team has "an amazing understanding of the pugilistic arts" and they're "really dedicated and focused on UFC right now." Of course, UFC tends to involve a good deal more kicking than boxing.

So what fate lies in store for the sweet science? Wilson seems noncommittal. "Do I see a future for Fight Night? You know, sure. But right now, UFC is where our fighting focus is."

EA hasn't detailed its UFC game yet, but at Tuesday's Xbox One announcement, UFC was among the franchises represented when EA Sports took the stage. The company said next-gen EA Sports titles (including UFC) will use the new "Ignite" engine, which promises better AI and 3D crowds.

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From The Chatty
  • reply
    May 24, 2013 12:30 PM

    Steve Watts posted a new article, EA puts Fight Night on hold in favor of UFC.

    EA Sports head Andrew Wilson says the Fight Night team has been almost entirely redirected to work on UFC, after the company grabbed the rights from THQ in June of last year.

    • reply
      May 24, 2013 12:31 PM

      Does anyone know how the last Fight Night did sales wise? I thought the story based approach to career mode was the right direction.

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        May 24, 2013 1:27 PM

        I bought it because the story mode looked cool, then I realized it is still a game where you punch a guy 500000 times until he falls down.

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          May 24, 2013 1:57 PM

          the story mode sucked in certain ways (namely how it tried to add difficulty with cheap shit) but I thought in general they've done a really good job with a natural control scheme that lets you feel fairly close to real boxing at times

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          May 25, 2013 8:08 PM

          As opposed to a game where you shoot 500000 guys until they fall down

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      May 24, 2013 12:44 PM

      Lets hope the moves are easier to do than THQ's iteration. It was worse than a Mortal Kombat fatality trying to do some of the moves.

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        May 24, 2013 12:53 PM

        yeah it's tough because on one hand it feels disingenuous to just press A to submit someone, it loses all the fun technicality that is involved in executing that move in reality. But then if you make each submission some absurd right stick gesture they're just impossible to remember/apply for most people.

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          May 24, 2013 1:03 PM

          It wasn't really anywhere near as hard as doing precisely what you wanted in Skate though, I think I could teach it to anyone.

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            May 24, 2013 1:17 PM

            yes, it's not rocket science, anyone could learn it given enough time and practice. That is the case for most games, but that's not really a sufficient justification for a high learning curve control scheme of ultimately most people aren't willing to put in that time and practice

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        May 24, 2013 1:01 PM

        I had no problems with it

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      May 24, 2013 1:09 PM

      Booooooo.

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      May 24, 2013 3:02 PM

      They really screwed this series up. It hasn't gone anywhere since Fight Night Round 3.

      There was space to make a really realistic boxing game like Skate was to skateboarding.

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      May 24, 2013 5:10 PM

      Fuck UFC.

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      May 27, 2013 5:34 PM

      I watch both boxing and MMA, but gotta say that I'm sad to see the FN series abandoned for the immediate future. I've had a lot of fun with it despite its faults. FN has always been one of the most graphically pleasing series on a console and I was looking forward to the next gen iteration of it.

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