Tiger Woods Starting in 1998,
Tiger Woods was the star and face of the series. The deal with Woods was worth
$6.2 to 7 million a year at the height of his 15 years at
EA Sports. Both parties had agreed to incorporate the Masters into a video game for several years, but Augusta National Golf Club agreed only when the presentation and playability of the course was perfect. It took EA Tiburon's 80-person development team three years of work from 2009 to 2011 to make Augusta National available in Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12. In January 2012, EA announced that there would be no more releases on the Wii, with the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 editions would continue to receive new online and social features. They also said that the Xbox 360's Kinect and the PlayStation 3's PlayStation Move have both made "significant advances in motion gaming." In February 2013, EA announced that there will be no
Wii U version of
Tiger Woods PGA Tour.
Rory Mcllroy According to
Kotaku,
Electronic Arts reportedly planned to outsource
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 15 and give the in-house team at
EA Tiburon two years to make
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 16 for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One (the title would see release as
Rory McIlroy PGA Tour). However, when CEO
John Riccitiello resigned March 2013, this plan was dropped to save costs. In October 2013, EA's partnership with Woods and a licensing agreement with
Augusta National Golf Club reached an end. According to EA, the split is a mutual decision. The agreement with
HB Studios comes after a similar long-term licensing agreement between the
PGA Tour and
Electronic Arts came to an end. EA had dominated electronic golf games thanks to a partnership with 15-time major tournament winner Tiger Woods. From 1999 to 2013
Tiger Woods PGA Tour was the top video golf game on the market. After EA and Woods ended their agreement in 2013, EA developed a similar game in 2015 in a partnership with
Rory McIlroy.
Rory McIlroy PGA Tour, running on the
Frostbite engine, did not fare nearly as well as the previous EA versions featuring Woods. The game was pulled from all digital storefronts in May 2018. In September 2018, EA relinquished its agreement with the
PGA Tour in what appears to be a move away from golf games. In August 2018,
PGA Tour licensing director Matt Iofredo said the new partnership with
HB Studios is part of the sport's on-going efforts to introduce golf to a wider audience.
EA's return to the PGA Tour On March 29, 2021, EA announced a new golf video game was in development. The game would use the
Frostbite engine and was announced as
EA Sports PGA Tour. The game takes advantage of next-generation technology. This will be through a new long-term agreement signed this year with the PGA TOUR. EA announced on April 7, 2021, a day before the 2021 Masters, that the Masters and its home, Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia, will be playable exclusively in
EA Sports PGA Tour. It would be released under the name
EA Sports PGA Tour: Road to the Masters and along with the Masters event,
EA Sports PGA Tour will feature the PGA Championship, the U.S. Open and the Open Championship, making it the only video game to feature all four major men's professional golf tournaments. Facing pressure from 2K's recent releases, EA announced further innovations would be introduced in
EA Sports PGA Tour, one of which was scanning each golf course via aerial means; this was demonstrated with the
Augusta National course. before removing its release date by November 2021. On March 22, 2022, Electronic Arts announced the delay of
EA Sports PGA Tour by one year to spring 2023. EA did not give a reason for the delay, nor did they announce the game's platforms; on January 19, 2023, a gameplay trailer was released alongside a release date of March 24, 2023, releasing on
PlayStation 5,
Xbox Series X and Series S, and
Microsoft Windows. Further delays were announced on March 3, 2023, with the game releasing on the week of the Masters Tournament, with an early access release on Tuesday, April 4, and a worldwide launch on Friday, April 7, allowing the developers,
EA Tiburon, to polish the game further before launch.
Course scanning During development of
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10, in order to scan and faithfully reproduce the golf courses, the developers spent seven to ten days on each of the game's 16 courses and used a 3D laser scanner made by
Leica. The developers took the equipment to each hole and placed it and did a 360-degree scan of the entire course to map the terrain of each hole with a high level of accuracy that allows the player to "play the hole and the course exactly as [they] would in real life." The development of
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12 saw the usage of a new state-of-the-art laser scanning technology that took 10 days at Augusta National Golf Club to laser scan every hole in the game, allowing for significantly higher detail than in the previous titles. The development of
EA Sports PGA Tour saw the usage of custom LiDAR helicopter flights over each of the game's courses, flying scans at lower altitudes and slower speeds to achieve a greater density of data points and a higher level of realism than scans from public sources. And they meticulously mapped the courses, using advanced technologies such as photogrammetry, drone technology and GPS for high accuracy. ==Games==