EA Sports PGA Tour Releases in Spring 2023

[bigkev]

Re: EA Sports PGA Tour Releases in Spring 2023

2K has been more secretive than ever with their next game, and they pretty much know what EA PGA is going to be. 2K has no known timeline, and nothing in the planning for their new game has been released. They have Tiger, and won't say if he's going to be in the game or not. Everything is going to be a big surprise when they will start marketing the game, and on short notice. Customers won't have much time to dissect the game before deciding to buy it or not.

[VoltSwoosh]

Re: EA Sports PGA Tour Releases in Spring 2023

2K has been more secretive than ever with their next game, and they pretty much know what EA PGA is going to be. 2K has no known timeline, and nothing in the planning for their new game has been released. They have Tiger, and won't say if he's going to be in the game or not. Everything is going to be a big surprise when they will start marketing the game, and on short notice. Customers won't have much time to dissect the game before deciding to buy it or not.

2K23is either going to be 2K21 with Tiger content and tuning OR a massive upgrade with a new game engine and so on.

I’m really hoping it’s the latter but not holding my breath. I want to see 2K much more effort into PGA. Make it feel and look AAA. Get rid of the gimmick fish putter and big hats in favor of a serious approach like older TGC games.


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[bigkev]

Re: EA Sports PGA Tour Releases in Spring 2023

Get rid of the gimmick fish putter and big hats in favor of a serious approach like older TGC games.

I doubt they will get rid of those, they're not for us, it's to attract the arcade players and younger crowd. 2K21 was a huge upgrade, they got rid of the 3 clubs system, gave customers real difficulty level and custom settings.

[VoltSwoosh]

Re: EA Sports PGA Tour Releases in Spring 2023

I doubt they will get rid of those, they're not for us, it's to attract the arcade players and younger crowd. 2K21 was a huge upgrade, they got rid of the 3 clubs system, gave customers real difficulty level and custom settings.

I didn’t necessarily mean cutting the content from game, but more so all the marketing gimmicks and such for that stuff.

It doesn’t work long term, EA tried this route with Rory 15 with night club challenge and battlefield 3 par 3, it’s not sustainable for a golf game long term. Hence why it appears they are going serious again with the next game.


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[MrArlingtonBeach]

Re: EA Sports PGA Tour Releases in Spring 2023

I didn’t necessarily mean cutting the content from game, but more so all the marketing gimmicks and such for that stuff.

It doesn’t work long term, EA tried this route with Rory 15 with night club challenge and battlefield 3 par 3, it’s not sustainable for a golf game long term. Hence why it appears they are going serious again with the next game.


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Honestly, I thought the Night Club stuff was a decent diversion. The problem was that the rest of the Rory game didn't need a diversion, since it had next to no content. It needed more of...anything.

There is a place in both games for the silly, cartoony, arcade stuff. It does appeal to people...none of us here, generally speaking, however. The thing is...the rest of the game needs to be polished and complete.

2K21 had a buggy career mode with jacked-up leaderboards that never got fixed, so seeing them market taco putters and pumpkin heads was annoying - just fix your basic stuff before offering weird add-ons!

Rory had less than 10 courses at launch, so including a Night Club mode and a Battlefield Par-3 course seemed pointless...why didn't they devote the time spent on those things to more robust content that would actually make career mode complete, like a basic event schedule and sponsorships?

[bigkev]

Re: EA Sports PGA Tour Releases in Spring 2023

The battlefield course was the first promo we saw for the game, so no surprise it was there. It was with the theme of new generation golf, with the new consoles and going with young Rory.

I thought the Pirates course, whatever the name, was a bit much as a new entry as most of us were waiting for real courses to complete career mode.

At the end of the day... EA pays no license for those fantasy courses. So there's a saving there. I expect to see all of them in the next game.

[VoltSwoosh]

Re: EA Sports PGA Tour Releases in Spring 2023

Honestly, I thought the Night Club stuff was a decent diversion. The problem was that the rest of the Rory game didn't need a diversion, since it had next to no content. It needed more of...anything.

There is a place in both games for the silly, cartoony, arcade stuff. It does appeal to people...none of us here, generally speaking, however. The thing is...the rest of the game needs to be polished and complete.

2K21 had a buggy career mode with jacked-up leaderboards that never got fixed, so seeing them market taco putters and pumpkin heads was annoying - just fix your basic stuff before offering weird add-ons!

Rory had less than 10 courses at launch, so including a Night Club mode and a Battlefield Par-3 course seemed pointless...why didn't they devote the time spent on those things to more robust content that would actually make career mode complete, like a basic event schedule and sponsorships?

My opinion, but using a golf ball to race around like Mario kart has no place in any official pga golf game.


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[MrArlingtonBeach]

Re: EA Sports PGA Tour Releases in Spring 2023

My opinion, but using a golf ball to race around like Mario kart has no place in any official pga golf game.


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That's fine, but like I said, these modes aren't designed for people like you and me, who hang around on forums, and who scope out Instagram and Twitter for nuggets of news about PGA Tour golf games.

Many of the PGA Tour games have had these silly modes and aspects to them. Look at this intro to Tiger Woods 2004...it's arcadey, goofy nonsense: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2XuLYd2avk

Other TW games had disc golf modes, mini golf modes, and even the Tiger Legacy mode where you played as TW hitting shots as a toddler on a TV talk show. Old TW games also had speed golf, and PGA 2K21 incorporated that with their Divot Derby mode. These modes have been part of golf games for a long time now, and are still part of the most recent releases available.

These are all things meant for casual players. Sure, us hardcore folks might poke our heads into those modes once and a while, but they are not made for us.

[VoltSwoosh]

Re: EA Sports PGA Tour Releases in Spring 2023

That's fine, but like I said, these modes aren't designed for people like you and me, who hang around on forums, and who scope out Instagram and Twitter for nuggets of news about PGA Tour golf games.



Many of the PGA Tour games have had these silly modes and aspects to them. Look at this intro to Tiger Woods 2004...it's arcadey, goofy nonsense: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2XuLYd2avk



Other TW games had disc golf modes, mini golf modes, and even the Tiger Legacy mode where you played as TW hitting shots as a toddler on a TV talk show. Old TW games also had speed golf, and PGA 2K21 incorporated that with their Divot Derby mode. These modes have been part of golf games for a long time now, and are still part of the most recent releases available.



These are all things meant for casual players. Sure, us hardcore folks might poke our heads into those modes once and a while, but they are not made for us.

Here’s the thing about those, outside of disc golf which was exclusive for wii, those are all well, actually golf.

Rm15 is the only pga game to have a silly mode like night club challenge wheee your ball is a car and a bomb.

And trust me, evidently it didn’t do too well with casuals either.


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[MrArlingtonBeach]

Re: EA Sports PGA Tour Releases in Spring 2023

I understand your points here...I don't play the casual, arcade modes too often myself.

But the whole point is that you're already buying the game for the PGA Tour stuff. They don't need to get you in the door. The arcade stuff, golf related or not, is to try to appeal to those who, quite honestly, don't care about real golf.

And interestingly enough, Tiger Woods 14, a game that most of us here love and think is one of the best golf games ever, had very little in the way of "arcade" things. It had all 4 majors, tons of courses via DLC, and even a cool Legends of the Majors mode for golf history fans. It sold something like 400K copies.

Rory, which included a full-fledged arcade mode, exaggerated dance/frustration reactions on the course that needed to be patched because they were too silly, and less real-life content than any EA golf game since basically the Sega Genesis or maybe the PS One era sold 2x as many copies as TW14. Sure, it was a shiny new thing, but that's quite the disparity there.

And I am not saying that the Night Club Challenge was the reason Rory sold over 800K copies. But consider this: Rory didn't have Augusta, TW 14 did, and Rory outsold TW 14 by a lot. That's kind of wild.

[bigkev]

Re: EA Sports PGA Tour Releases in Spring 2023

Just to show, TW14 has la crême de la crême of career mode, and just 45% of gamers earned their PGA card. We've got 55% who had either not bother trying or never played career mode. And defeat Bobby Jones in the Legends challenge, it's only 14%. We've got 41% trying the Nightclub, and 37% going as far as getting the Feeling Boosted trophy.

[VoltSwoosh]

Re: EA Sports PGA Tour Releases in Spring 2023

I understand your points here...I don't play the casual, arcade modes too often myself.

But the whole point is that you're already buying the game for the PGA Tour stuff. They don't need to get you in the door. The arcade stuff, golf related or not, is to try to appeal to those who, quite honestly, don't care about real golf.

And interestingly enough, Tiger Woods 14, a game that most of us here love and think is one of the best golf games ever, had very little in the way of "arcade" things. It had all 4 majors, tons of courses via DLC, and even a cool Legends of the Majors mode for golf history fans. It sold something like 400K copies.

Rory, which included a full-fledged arcade mode, exaggerated dance/frustration reactions on the course that needed to be patched because they were too silly, and less real-life content than any EA golf game since basically the Sega Genesis or maybe the PS One era sold 2x as many copies as TW14. Sure, it was a shiny new thing, but that's quite the disparity there.

And I am not saying that the Night Club Challenge was the reason Rory sold over 800K copies. But consider this: Rory didn't have Augusta, TW 14 did, and Rory outsold TW 14 by a lot. That's kind of wild.

I’d guess one reason Rory 15 sold more because people were trying to get their EA golf fix on next gen consoles since obviously ps3 games didn’t work.


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[MrArlingtonBeach]

Re: EA Sports PGA Tour Releases in Spring 2023

I’d guess one reason Rory 15 sold more because people were trying to get their EA golf fix on next gen consoles since obviously ps3 games didn’t work.


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Yeah, for sure...like I said, it was the "shiny new thing". All I am saying is that a more real-life focused game like TW14 doesn't guarantee it will appeal to a more broad base of gamers. That's why Rory then put an arcade mode in...TW was great for the diehard golf fans, but didn't appeal to the casual player as much. Rory took it perhaps a bit too far in both directions...a lot less real-life content and way too silly arcade content.

[VoltSwoosh]

Re: EA Sports PGA Tour Releases in Spring 2023

Yeah, for sure...like I said, it was the "shiny new thing". All I am saying is that a more real-life focused game like TW14 doesn't guarantee it will appeal to a more broad base of gamers. That's why Rory then put an arcade mode in...TW was great for the diehard golf fans, but didn't appeal to the casual player as much. Rory took it perhaps a bit too far in both directions...a lot less real-life content and way too silly arcade content.

TW 14 would have done much better had their not been annual games.

And I think Rory went arcade because the loss of tiger and Augusta, they had to try something different. I think the gap between Rory 15 and PGA Masters 23 tells how it went for EA.


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[MrArlingtonBeach]

Re: EA Sports PGA Tour Releases in Spring 2023

TW 14 would have done much better had their not been annual games.

And I think Rory went arcade because the loss of tiger and Augusta, they had to try something different. I think the gap between Rory 15 and PGA Masters 23 tells how it went for EA.


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Agreed on the TW 14/annual release side of things.

It wasn't the Night Club Challenge that killed EA's golf series for over 5 years. It was the amazingly poor word of mouth and reviews the game received when it shipped with only 8 real courses (TW14 had 20 on-disc out of the gate) and sold at the AAA title price of $60.

They stripped it down to the bare bones...no one had anything to do in the game when it released. For all its faults and silliness, Night Club was the only thing that had any substance to it, especially when compared to what career mode looked like in TW14 vs. what it looked like in Rory. We had to wait about a year to get the "full" game, which still had fewer real-world courses available in it than TW14's standard version.

Arcade stuff in these golf games is silly, dumb, and something we all kind of complain about. But it's there for a reason, even in the most recent golf games to come out. They don't add that stuff for everyone's health...it appeals to the casual player and broadens the player base. And the games that went more to the "real" side of things were not as successful, or at least weren't planned as big-time AAA games.

Even the very first TGC games, which simply had the course designer, local rounds, and societies - with no career mode or anything - sold very few copies (the first The Golf Club on PS4 sold 130K copies, per VGChartz...TGC2 sold about the same). They didn't have a broad appeal to casual players. They were a niche product, and marketed as such.

PGA 2K and the EA Sports games are not niche. They are mass-market. They need to appeal to all kinds of gamers, and that's why we get ads and posts for pumpkin heads, fish putters, and NBA clothing in a golf game.