According to a number of sources, the ugly truth behind the sale of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) license to Electronic Arts is that THQ was never able to break even with the franchise. This revolution is confirmed by industry guru Michael Pachter from Wedbush. When all the numbers are added up, it would seem that this is correct.
While the news of the UFC video game license moving to EA was big news, it isn’t a surprise, when you consider that the third UFC title released by THQ needed to reach the 2 million mark in sales just to break even. UFC Undisputed 3 has apparently only sold about 1.4 million copies, which is much less than the 2 million breakeven point.
It will be interesting to see how much more successful EA is with the UFC license and if it will be able to turn it into a yearly sports franchise or it will alternate years with Fight Night as EA’s original MMA title was initially tapped to do. Our sources tell us that a lot it in flux with EA and the UFC license and they are still in the process of making decision on how best to proceed, but sources continue to tell us that we should not expect to see a UFC title from EA till at least 2013 and it might be 2014 if EA elects to skip the platforms of this generation and instead focus on a release for the Xbox 720 and PlayStation 4, both of which are now expected in 2014.
