UFC 6 Trailer Drops, Plus Everything Else From This Week in Sports Gaming

It was a nuts and bolts week in sports gaming as we got a lot of the usual stuff you’d expect with some new releases on the horizon and a bunch of other games receiving updates during the first week of May.

In my mind, the UFC 6 trailer is the biggest story of the week. We previously mentioned this news was incoming in last week’s weekly roundup as leaks had already started to come out about EA’s latest combat fighting game.

EA chose to meet the leaks head on, and so I think they moved up their timetable a bit to release the trailer ahead of the future announcements that seem to be coming in a couple weeks.

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You can scope out the trailer below and get your first look at in-engine gameplay:

As someone who plays almost no fighting games, watches almost no UFC, and hasn’t really played this series in years, I’m not going to try and pretend to have a take here. About the only thing I’ll say is, like usual, the game looks impressive from a visual fidelity standpoint.

I know UFC 5 doesn’t have the best reputation as it seemed like it wasn’t a big step up from 4 (among other issues), but that means there’s probably quite a bit riding on this game — and perhaps the future of the series as well.

Again, EA should have much more information to throw our way during the next couple weeks, so it will be full throttle until the game’s release on June 19.

Everything Else That Happened This Week In Sports Gaming

Keeping with EA, the company did release its Q4 financials. They did miss their estimated earnings, but it’s hard to say the quarter wasn’t a success. The latest Battlefield seems to have been the thing that helped out its console revenues the most. Elsewhere, they still made boatloads of cash with their “live services” (see: Ultimate Team) and only mobile revenues took a hit.

All in all, EA had a good quarter, and so far it doesn’t seem like anything too crazy is going on with the company since it was acquired back in September.

Getting back to fighting games, Undisputed will be getting no more major updates as Steel City is moving on to the sequel.

The studio is already working on the new version of Undisputed, and it seems like the boxing franchise will be developed in the Unreal Engine this time around rather than Unity, which should likely make some people very happy as it seemed like the Unity engine caused them problems throughout development.

In general, Undisputed definitely lost momentum — arguably even before the “full” release happened — but it’s good to see Steel City was successful enough to take another crack at things.

I have a hard time believing that, while boxing as a sport doesn’t have the popularity it used to, people wouldn’t still come out for a good boxing game. There are too many lapsed Fight Night fans and fans of combat/fighting games overall to ignore that audience.

In the world of The Show, there was a small patch that was released yesterday. Several player models have been updated, including Ben Brown, Daniel Espino, Jacob Misiorowski, Ryan Thompson and Austin Wells. The Mis one is especially helpful because he would get all jacked up in franchise mode.

They also released more of the City Connect jerseys in both DD and offline:

Changing gears, the first NBA The Run closed beta seems to have been a success. The arcade hoops title is getting another closed beta on May 16. This means it will fall on a Saturday this time around, and it will be for PC only once again.

The developers wrote up a lot of the feedback that they received during the first beta, and it’s worth a read if you’re closely following this game in the hopes it can scratch the itch of NBA Street.

They also plan to get to a console beta at some point, but nothing is set in stone as of yet.

Forza Horizon 6 remains one of the most anticipated Xbox games of the year, and Christian wrote up a helpful rundown detailing the expected Xbox Series X vs. Series S differences. Much like the PS5 Pro vs. normal PS5, you can expect to get more out of Forza Horizon on the “premium” version of the console when it releases on May 19 (early access begins on May 15).

Some of the least shocking (but still disappointing) news of the week is that Take-Two has zero plans to revive NFL 2K, and MLB 2K is likely to remain dormant as well. Long-time games reporter Stephen Totilo had a wide-ranging interview with Take Two CEO Strauss Zelnick on Totilo’s Substack.

Basically, Take Two lost a lot of cash on the MLB 2K series and don’t seem interested in getting back into the game. In addition, their NFL 2K card game (that Zelnick admits was crappy in CEO speak) failed, and while they’re open to an NFL-licensed product in the future, they have zero plans to actually put in the work and make any sort of real football game at this point.

While Zelnick maybe championed sports games at some point, he seems deeply uninterested in taking risks in that space anymore, and so we might be in a holding pattern with sports games overall beyond the College Hoops 2K hybrid title that is still on the books as of now — again, right now it seems like it will start as an “add-on” within NBA 2K whenever it’s released a couple years down the line.

In happier football news, it appears more than 400 real high schools will be coming to the in-development Varsity High School Football. Now, there are thousands upon thousands of real high schools so this is just a drop in the bucket, but if you wanted a new reason to keep this on your Steam wishlist, now you might have it.

Lastly, just a reminder that EA FC 26 and Descenders Next have hit game subscription services. FC 26 is now on PS Plus, and Descenders Next is now available on Xbox Game Pass.