FirstCuts: EA Sports Bringing Back Mike Tyson

Thanks to the friendly folks down the hall at SportsBusiness Daily, there is much rejoicing in video game land. For the first time in years, Mike Tyson is coming back to your gaming console.↵↵EA Sports will announce the 2009 release of Fight Night 4 today, according to the report. Lennox Lewis, Sugar Ray Leonard and Winky Wright will attend the announcement. Although it doesn’t sound like Tyson has any direct involvement in the game, the fact that his likeness will be part of the game is a big selling point. Even as Nintendo re-released Punch-Out!! on the Wii’s Virtual Console, they dropped Mike Tyson from the game and replaced him with the fictional Mr. Dream character.↵

↵↵If the report is true that the game will wait until ‘09, it makes sense. It would give the upcoming boxing title Facebreaker some room to breathe. While the Fight Night franchise has always focused on realism, Facebreaker is expected to be more along the lines of Ready 2 Rumble for the Dreamcast.↵

↵↵The talk about Facebreaker leads us to EA Sports’ other bit of significant news this week. EA Sports Freestyle is being launched by the company as a sub-brand to aim at casual gaming fans. “No rules, just fun,” is the motto.↵

↵↵Facebreaker will be the first IP under EA’s new sub-brand. The press release on this one reminded me how stale sports games have become though. The new IP will be EA’s first since 2002. I realize new sports aren’t being invented daily, but is everyone so happy with the status quo that things don’t need to be reset every now and again?↵

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