John-ShepardTiger Woods will never again have that squeaky clean image but at this point, he probably only hopes to restore a bit of faith and awe in his fans.
So far, it's not working so well, at least not based on the sales numbers of his most recent video game title, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 . According to 1Up , via GamesIndustry.biz, EA has reported that this year's Tiger Woods effort has suffered a 68% drop in US sales in comparison to last year's game. The Wii version dropped 86%, which Cowen & Company's Doug Creutz has called a "particularly catastrophic" event in a recent note to investors. He does acknowledge that last year's game shipped bundled with Nintendo's new MotionPlus controller, but even so, he believes the recent Tiger scandal has had a large impact. EA seemed pretty confident going into the release of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 that it would be another sales hit but now, they may be reassessing the situation…which, if we've got our thinking caps on, could lead to them "reassessing" the idea of a Woods game for next year. Many sponsors dropped Tiger after the fallout but EA – and a few others – remained steadfastly by the embattled golfer's side; the question is, has that proven to be a bad idea?
Well, there were a lot of great games in the first half of 2010. Perhaps that conflicted with the title in question and affected sales. But let's not forget that in addition to the scandal, Tiger hasn't exactly been winning. Popularity takes a hit due to that, too.
Related Game(s): Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11
