As unfortunate as that development was for Burns and his fans, the news couldn’t have been better for video game publisher Electronic Arts, which happens to be putting Masvidal on the cover of EA Sports UFC 4 alongside Israel Adesanya.

Before you ask: No, there’s no word yet on PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X versions of the game.

Asked about playing the game on next-gen consoles via backward compatibility, Brian Hayes, the game’s creative director, said in a statement to Polygon that “presumably, fans will be able to play UFC 4 on their Gen 5 consoles,” as long as both the PS5 and Xbox Series X offer the feature.

But he noted, “We haven’t yet had an opportunity to test this out and determine whether any additional development work is required to leverage Backward Compatibility.” The statement is strange, considering that the box art for the Xbox One version claims the game will be playable across both Xbox One and Xbox Series X via Smart Delivery.

They said their overarching goal is to broaden the series’ appeal by making UFC 4 more accessible — a welcome change for the franchise, since we described 2018’s EA Sports UFC 3 in our review as “probably the least pick-up-and-play game in the sports genre.”.

Both McDonald and Hayes have been working on the EA Sports UFC series since the beginning, and their approach used to be inspired primarily by EA Sports’ famous, long-running tagline, “It’s in the game.” Hayes told Polygon, “We were always consistently going down [the path of] ‘how can we add more sim, more realism?’” This time around, they’re still focusing on delivering an authentic MMA gameplay experience in UFC 4, but “the broader game has kind of taken a bit of a pivot” away from the real-life UFC, according to Hayes.

It turned out that the career mode was easily the most popular mode, and that people strongly favored using created fighters rather than the real athletes on the roster.

After that, UFC 4’s career mode will play out similarly to that of UFC 3, which was all about becoming the G.O.A.T.

Since many people will play the career mode with a custom character, EA Vancouver has greatly expanded the customization options available when you’re creating a fighter.

“As a video game, we have the ability to do things that you can’t do in real life,” said Hayes