EA Sports MMA in Limbo

[Steve_OS]

Kotaku's Owen Good checks in with the latest on the unknown status that defines EA Sports MMA these days. He spoke with EA Sports’ senior vice president of worldwide development Andrew Wilson about the franchise, as well as EA's feelings about being involved in the fighting genre.

Quote:

UFC president Dana White has also publicly rebuked EA Sports and said his operation would never do business with it. (Indeed, THQ has the exclusive license on UFC games). With Strikeforce under UFC, an EA Sports MMA title loses not only the second-place (and a distant second) brand in MMA promotions, its ability to include real licensed fighters from that series becomes murkier. Certainly neither White nor the UFC would approve of any new deals.

Source - EA Sports Won’t Say MMA’s Dead, but Won’t Say It’s Getting a Sequel, Either (Kotaku)

[ausar72]

EA should just buy THQ and say, "Ok, now it's your move!"

[SHAKYR]

EA should merge the EA MMA and Fight Night team so they can finally make a deep and realistic game.

[goh]

Dana said all the Strikeforce contracts were still valid.

[KidShowtime]

Sounds like Strikeforce didn't have another deal in place with EA Sports. That's too bad really... EA SPORTS MMA was such a refreshing change from the Undisputed series. You can even see in Undisputed 12 that they've taken the concepts created by the EA team and infused them into their own engine.

[sportznut02]

Sucks but not really that surprised. I actually preferred EA MMA to either one of the UFC Undisputed games.

[aholbert32]

Quote: Originally Posted by goh

Dana said all the Strikeforce contracts were still valid.

It is but that only applies to the Strikeforce brand. All Strikeforce fighters are under Zuffa contracts now and EA only signed most of the fighters to one year contracts. So it can still have the Strikeforce brand but wont be able to sign most of the fighters. Also Strikeforce may not even exist in 2012.

[ManiacMatt1782]

Quote: Originally Posted by aholbert32

It is but that only applies to the Strikeforce brand. All Strikeforce fighters are under Zuffa contracts now and EA only signed most of the fighters to one year contracts. So it can still have the Strikeforce brand but wont be able to sign most of the fighters. Also Strikeforce may not even exist in 2012.

Not quite true, A lot of stikeforces contracts were actually contracts with showtime, that is the only reason Dana is playing nice and still putting on strikeforce shows.