Here's How Microtransactions Are Handled In EA's Next Game, UFC 3

Electronic Arts made a lot of headlines during the 2017 holiday season with its Star Wars Battlefront II's microtransaction controversy. With UFC 3 as the company's next big release, we were curious how this latest installment in EA Sports' MMA series will handle its own in-game economy. It turns out--for better or worse--that the game will retain much of the same systems found in UFC 2, with a few minor changes.

Brian Hayes, UFC 3's creative director detailed how microtransactions will work for UFC 3, which will be exclusive to the Ultimate Team mode, "There are no microtransactions except in Ultimate Team. It's similar to how it was in UFC 2. You can fight head-to-head against other people and earn coins, you can fight offline against the CPU avatar version of another person, and you can take on single-player scenario objectives in Ultimate Team.

All these activities earn you coins. You can spend these coins on item packs or you can buy UFC points to buy item packs. You can buy UFC points in Ultimate Team but they get you nothing outside of Ultimate Team. If you are not interested in microtransactions, you still can play Ultimate Team."

Hayes continued by detailing how UFC 3 Ultimate Team mode differs from its UFC 2 counterpart, "We also overhauled the fighter customization UI so you have a much better view of what items your fighter has and how well those items fit together. It's a much more robust chemistry system. Another big change is that you can fight in Ultimate Team with licensed fighter avatars. In UFC 2, it was user-created fighters only. Now you can get something like a Conor McGregor card and you can upgrade him just as you would a created fighter. You can fight with the skin of a UFC fighter if you wanted to."

Along with Ultimate Team, UFC 3 features a promising Career Mode, which has robust training and self-promotion components to complement the actual cage matches. The above video not only showcases this mode, but also the newly overhauled motion-captured fighter animations.

EA Sports UFC 3 is due out February 3, 2018 for Xbox One, and PlayStation 4.