Ultimate Rivals: The Rink
The Rock And Other WWE Superstars Join The Ultimate Rivals Franchise
The Rock is joined by Roman Reigns, Becky Lynch, Sasha Banks, and Bayley as the fifth WWE superstar confirmed for Ultimate Rivals series. Now you can pit Rock against Wayne Gretzky for a Great One-on-Great One showdown. The WWE licensing deal includes eight superstars/legends, with the remaining three to be revealed in the coming months. Until then, you can get a look at the in-game models for the already announced wrestlers in the gallery below."
Read full Game Informer article here: https://www.gameinformer.com/2021/05/18/the-rock-and-other-wwe-superstars-join-the-ultimate-rivals-franchise
Sports Business Journal features Ultimate Rivals
create an unlicensed baseball video game set in the 1920s.
When that aspiration fell short, Freidlin pivoted his company, Bit Fry Game Studios, to a new goal
and wound up achieving something even more unlikely: securing licensing agreements with 10
professional sports organizations to create an arcade-action sports game. Ultimate Rivals: The
Rink is a futuristic hockey game that incorporates scores of current professional athletes from
various sports. It took 8 months to create, and for the monumental licensing achievements alone,
the late David Stern, an early investor in the company, had said Freidlin should be canonized.
Bit Fry, the Portsmouth, N.H.,-based company that has grown to 62 full-time employees since its
founding in 2013, is well suited for this moment. The pandemic has broadened the gaming
audience, and Freidlin says younger people are drawn to what he calls the current “mash-up era,”
where consumers seek to create their own experiences and are accustomed to marquee names
crossing over in everything from movies to music."
Read full SBJ article here by Eric Prisbell:
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e00db66b34fb20c70e62391/t/5fd7e91716b55c49c4430902/1607985431841/SBJ+-+Bit+Fry+Article+12.7.20.pdf
Putting together an All-Star team of sports licenses
As the name implies, Ultimate Rivals: The Rink is a hockey game rather than a baseball game. It's set in a sci-fi future rather than the past. And it's about as far from unlicensed as you can get.
Naturally, it has the licenses for both the National Hockey League and the National Hockey League Players Association. In an act of thoroughness, Bit Fry also secured the individual license of retired legend Wayne Gretzky. And in a move we can only describe as coming from left field, Ultimate Rivals: The Rink also features licenses from Major League Baseball, the Major League Baseball Players Association, the National Basketball Association, the National Basketball Players Association, the Women's National Basketball Players Association, the US Women's National Team Players Association (soccer), and the National Football League Players Association. (The NFL itself remains on the sidelines of this licensing throwdown.)"
For full gameindustry.biz article by Brendan Sinclair, read here:
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2020-02-06-putting-together-an-all-star-team-of-sports-licenses