EA Sports MMA Video: In Game Action

[JoeMimic]

Four years? The Griffin/Bonnar fight was four years before 09 came out, you can't tell me THQ was starting to make the game then. The THQ deal was announced in 07 so I'd say at most two and a half years of developement before 09 came out. THQ built their engine from the ground up, EA looks to have taken a lot of elements from their fight night engine and tweaked it around MMA.

[Jesus]

This game has tons of potential, but at the same time MMA is a hard sport to replicate. Im hoping that with these vids being so early and probably of an even earlier version of the game that there is still hope.

[Stumbleweed]

I don't have a link, but Dana said that they had been working on the game's framework for nearly 4 years before release. They didn't have a publisher nailed down, but they were laying the groundwork back then... that's also around the time that he approached EA with it and they basically laughed in his face. They weren't actually coding and making the game that long ago, but unlike EA, the people behind the UFC game were already working on the concepts and groundwork for the final game well in advance.

EA is basically trying to modify Fight Night as cheaply and as easily as possible in order to make it work with MMA rather than building something from scratch with a crapload of pre-planning. Point being, I don't see this first effort being as good as the UFC's first effort because the advantage of having the FN engine to use is more than negated by the advantage of 4+ additional years of planning and knowledge that the UFC crew brought to the table with them. Not to mention that they've had issues implementing the FN engine into an MMA setting and have probably spent almost as much time tweaking it to work passably as they would have to just do the game from the ground up.

[JoeMimic]

It makes sense though, you'd think they would've had something to show the UFC to make them partner up with them.