EA Sports MMA announced their Heavyweight roster last week as a marketing strategy to release each one of their weight class rosters during the month of August. Earlier today, they followed last weeks pattern and released the Light Heavyweight roster along with an Online features promotional video. EA Sports is ramping up their advertising and marketing for the long awaited EA Sports MMA release scheduled on October 19th. Via EA Sports MMA’s Twitter feed:
Check out the complete class of Heavyweights in EA SPORTS MMA. Light Heavyweight class to be announced next Monday. Next week…..EA SPORTS MMA online modes revealed….keep an eye on easportsmma.com for more info…
Complete roster reveal by weight class starts 8/9 with heavyweights at easports.com/mma…..new update each Monday in August.
HW Roster: Bobby Lashley, Randy Couture, Fedor Emelianenko, Alistair Overeem, Fabricio Werdum, Hidehiko Yoshida, Andrei Arlovski, “King Mo” Lawal, Jeff Monson, Ken Shamrock, Kevin Randleman, Brett Rogers, Bob Sapp, Josh Barnett, Tim Sylvia, Andreas Kraniotakes.
LHW Roster: Ken Shamrock, Jason “Mayhem” Miller, Bas Rutten, Randy Couture, Renato “Babalu” Sobral, Gegard Mousasi, Frank Shamrock, Vladimir Matyushenko, “King Mo” Lawal, Scott Smith, Roger Gracie, Melvin Manhoef, “Ninja” Rua, Matt Lindland, Kevin Randleman, Dan Henderson, Alistair Overeem.
EA Sports MMA Promotion with Walmart, BestBuy, and Gamestop: Big John McCarthy, Herschel Walker, and “Classic” Frank Shamrock will be bonus downloadable characters in the video game if you pre-order your game with either Walmart, BestBuy, or GameStop stores.
EA Sports MMA Online Features Promo:
Payout Perspective:
EA Sports MMA has been doing a great job of slowly leaking video game features and fighters on their roster over the past year. It appears they will continue that trend during the next few months up to the launch date in October. Starting last week, they started revealing their full roster to the public and today announced their LHW roster along with Online modes and features. They are doing some promotions with video game and retail giants such as Walmart, Best Buy, and Game Stop.
As strategy is concerned, they will do a great job keeping their video game in the news for the upcoming weeks, but on the negative sides fans can get a jump start at pointing out some faults they already see in the game. As MMA fans and the MMA media rankings like to frequently point out, quality LHW fighters outside of the UFC are scarce. EA Sports MMA tries to get around the troublesome weight class by adding some fighters that fought there before like Bas Rutten and Alistair Overeem or in the past like Mayhem Miller, Ninja Rua, and Matt Lindland. Fans on the net have been quick to point out that they are not true LHW’s and that there should be more options available for them. Personally, I would have loved to seen Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou, Dave Herman, and Rafael Feijao added to the weight class.
A saving grace for EA Sports MMA here are the numerous features which come with the game, one being Game Face, which will let you take any fighters picture and virtually create them for you in the game. In fact, there is also another feature named “Fighter Share” which will let users share their own created fighters with gamers worldwide. These features will allow fighters from all MMA promotions to be added to the game and is a loophole EA Sports MMA will exploit to get around the exclusive contracts UFC fighters have signed with THQ to allow them to appear in their UFC Undisputed titles.
Some of these fighter placements are ridiculous. Alistair Overeem hasn’t fought at LHW in 3 1/2 years (and no separate SMALLER character model for LHW? C’mon…), Jason Miller hasn’t fought at LHW in 4 years (his ONLY time ever doing so), and Kevin Randleman hasn’t fought at heavyweight in 5 years. This shows roster desperation, but I guess that’s to be expected.
Machiel Van:
I think we knew the roster was going to be thin at LHW, but on the bright side their roster should be great at the lower weights. Like I mentioned in the piece, their “Game Face” and “Fighter Share” features will really get every fighter in the MMA landscape in the game, so this roster they are releasing will only be the “base” roster.
I for one am enjoying this chess game between EA and UFC. “Game Face” will definitely help fill the void in certain weight classes as online users will generate their favorite UFC fighters and share them. EA MMA already looks like a better game than Undisputed and it’s not even available yet. I expect this launch to do better than I originally thought, perhaps selling upwards of 2 million + games. I’m even considering buying it and I’m not a big gamer.