EA hands UFC to Fight Night team

The next Ultimate Fighting Championship will be developed by the talent behind EA’s Fight Night titles.

The publisher has confirmed that EA Canada is now working on the provisionally-titled EA Sports UFC, according to Kotaku.

This will be the first UFC game published by EA after it picked up the rights from THQ last month.

EA Sports has even created a new division for the Canada studio, dubbed the Fighting Team, who were delighted with the rights acquisition.

"Most of the team didn’t even know about [the new UFC game] until the announcement at E3," said the team’s creative director Brian Hayes, who was gameplay design leader on the previous two Fight Night games.

"We were all watching it together and when [EA Sports boss] Andrew Wilson and [UFC president] Dana White took the stage, everybody starting cheering. It was great."

There’s no word on which platforms EA’s UFC title is coming to, or when it is due for release. It’s also unclear what will happen to the Fight Night series.