Back in July we told you that sales to Tiger Woods’ EA Sports golf video game were down 68%. One of EA’s publicists said that Tiger’s poor play on the course led to the downturn in sales. The same sentiment was expressed by EA President Peter Moore in an interview with Eurogamer.
Moore said of the games’ sales: “It’s not where we’d want to be on a year on year basis. It’s been disappointing, in particular on the Wii. There’s no hiding, because the results are there. The Wii has been a disappointment.”
Disappointment might describe their reaction to the poor sales, but I don’t know how it could not have been expected. With all the turmoil in Tiger’s life, there’s no way they were expecting a boom in sales of the video game. Moore added that they stand by Tiger as they have all along. He admitted that Tiger’s personal life “probably has something to do with [the low sales]” of the game and that “it’s a consumer call.”
Of course it is. As we said in July and we’ll say now, Tiger’s play on the course will have to vastly improve for his status as a top pitchman to return. Nobody wants to play Rich Beem golf on their XBox just as they don’t want Tiger finishing 5th in majors. They want to play the video game of the most dominant golfer in the world. Tiger has to return to that form for a lot of things to change.
