Several months have passed since the last UFC game, and despite a promising announcement last year, EA Sports UFC has been nowhere in sight.
That’s going to change, with EA confirming on the video game’s official Facebook page that the “first news” would appear on Tuesday.
Coincidentally—or not—Tuesday is also the same day that Microsoft is expected to reveal the successor to their Xbox 360 console, commonly dubbed the “Xbox 720” by both gaming industry journalists and fans.
Given the timing, it’s fair to assume that EA Sports UFC will be announced for the next Xbox console, either as part of Microsoft’s event, or during a separate reveal from EA.
UFC Undisputed 3 released for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 back in February 2012 to wide critical acclaim, but various things have changed since then—most notably, the bankruptcy and dissolution of the game’s original publisher, THQ.
Ironically, EA had a previously contentious relationship with UFC president Dana White prior to the release of THQ’s first UFC installment, when White detailed his first meeting with the company to seek them as a potential publishing partner (via MMA Junkie):
It’s easy to sit on the other side of the table and judge me on how I react to stuff like this. But let me tell you what – I’ve been in the trenches for almost 10 years, and I’ve been dealing with all these businesses, and EA was one of them.
EA Sports told us, ‘You’re not a real sport. ‘We wouldn’t touch this thing. We want nothing to do with this.’
We put our asses on the line, THQ and the UFC, to make a video-game deal in the worst economy in the world. We go out there and do this thing, and it’s successful, and now [expletive] EA Sports wants to do a video game. Really? That’s not what you told us a year-and-a-half ago.
You told us you’d never be in business with us. They wouldn’t even take a meeting because mixed martial arts disgusted them. This wasn’t a real sport. Boy, they got over that real quick, didn’t they?
After the success of UFC Undisputed 2009, EA further drew the ire of White by releasing EA Sports MMA, which mainly featured Strikeforce fighters like Nick Diaz and Fedor Emelianenko, with an added controversy over the inclusion of then-UFC fighter Randy Couture.
However, the two companies saw fit to patch things up immediately after EA bought out THQ’s license to the video game series.
In a surprise move, White even traveled out to Los Angeles on late notice in order to take the stage at E3 2012, helping announce EA Sports UFC during EA’s conference keynote at E3 2012.
Microsoft’s Xbox event starts at 10:00 a.m. PST on Tuesday (May 21) and will be viewable both on the official Xbox.com website and the “Live Events” hub on Xbox Live—more updates will likely be found on the Xbox Twitter account.
McKinley Noble is an MMA conspiracy theorist. His work has appeared in NVision, PC World, Macworld, GamePro, 1UP, MMA Mania and The L.A. Times.
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