Analyst: Tiger Woods' sex scandal has impacted PGA game franchise
Cowen Group analyst Doug Creutz believes the lack of large sales for Tiger Wood PGA Tour 11 during June may have something to do with the scandal surrounding the golfer.
According to Creutz, the less than stellar sales of the title could also be contributed to PGA Tour 10 shipping with Wii Motion Plus bundled with last year's title, but Woods' sex scandal may have permanently damaged franchise's sales potential.
"Although this is probably due in part to the fact that last year's version shipped bundled with Nintendo's new Motion Plus controller," said the analyst, "we are concerned that Woods' scandal woes may have permanently damaged the sales potential of what we believe to be EA's third most important sports franchise, behind Madden and FIFA."
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 released on June 8, and has seen an 86 percent decline in Wii sales since launch, and an overall decline of 68 percent across all formats, which Creutz called "particularly catastrophic".
The title didn't crack the top 20 on the NPD software chart for the month, and the only titles EA had on the chart were PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of 2010 FIFA World Cup: South Africa.
Creutz said Tiger Woods isn't the only EA franchise underperforming, as Skate 3's only sold 253,000 units and is down 40 percent compared to May and June 2009 totals for Skate 2, and Green Day: Rock Band has only moved 82,000 units across three platforms since launch.
Software has a whole has been in decline in recent months, which NPD has blamed on fewer strong releases with only the top ten titles for each month garnering the most success.
The sex scandal Woods faced last year may actually have nothing to do with the franchise's decline in sales, and may be just an added excuse from analysts to explain away issues prevalent with the industry as a whole, instead of consumer fatigue.
Tiger Woods first appeared in EA's PGA series was in 1998, with the release of Tiger Woods '99, before the franchise was rebranded in 1999 as Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2000.
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 was the first title in the series released on Wii, and 2009 saw the release of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10, Tiger Woods PGA Tour for iPhone, and the browser-based Tiger Woods PGA Tour Online for Mac and PC.
Via Gamasutra.