THQ Benefited from Hunger for UFC, says EEDAR

As we continue our look into the top selling games of 2009, we're examining what made THQ's UFC 2009 Undisputed such a success for the publisher. We recently spoke with EEDAR executive chairman Greg Short, who presented his new findings at Ayzenberg Group's [a]list Summit this past week. 

THQ has already shipped more than 2.9 million copies of the game worldwide, with over 1.5 million copies of UFC sold in the U.S., according to NPD. Similar to Capcom's Resident Evil 5 launch earlier this year, marketing clearly played a big role in the success of UFC, but that wasn't the only factor. Short explained that UFC's rise in popularity as a sport and the fact that a game hasn't been made in years made consumers very eager for the title. 

“The most interesting thing for me is that there wasn't a UFC release in four years... And looking at that situation, UFC has since exploded as a pop culture phenomenon. In the last couple year's it's really become like an adult's wrestling. I thought THQ did a fantastic marketing campaign, where you really see this whole 'live the fighter' experience in the commercial. It's so seamless the way they put the campaign together. What I think they really hit home with was that the UFC demographic was really larger than most people thought it was. And Juke's has a lot of experience building these types of games because they've been doing the WWE games forever, so the quality is there and on top of that THQ benefited from this hunger period where fans haven't had a UFC title to play in years. It's the right game at the right time, marketed the right way, and everything just came together,” he explained. 

One great strategy THQ had was to make sure their commercial aired in between rounds of an actual UFC fight. “They were running a great campaign on Spike where you're watching a fight and your adrenaline's pumping, and then this campaign comes on that mixes an almost photo-realistic fighting game with smooth moves straight into real scenes from the fight. You felt like this game was a real extension of watching UFC. And from that you can see the hype and interest that built right up until the release in May [according to Google Trends] – double what EA was able to accomplish and the sales reflect that,” Short said. 

Interestingly, Short also sees the success of UFC as another indicator that perhaps the fighting genre could be leveraged better in the industry – there would appear to be room for growth. 

“Looking at the top 10, you've got both UFC and Street Fighter IV, two fighting games. ... There aren't that many other fighting franchises and yet we've got two in the top 10 so far this year, so I think it's still a strong genre, which maybe doesn't get as many titles as it should because it's one of the smaller genres overall compared to shooters and action titles,” he said.