As Scott Van Pelt on ESPN today said that security in the Masters every Uppity patrons can treat the establishment of the beautiful south. What I can not control is the sky – at least not entirely anyway this is like an airplane with the banner “Tiger: Did you mean ‘Bootyism’? “They managed to get ahead in the course.
First of all congratulations for ESPN to show the level of discussion (even if they were due to AP photogs always dissolved in air, had no choice) and then his presence.
Secondly, if these people think they are God’s country, invading the airspace so? Usually the answer: “PETA would be.” But since this has nothing to do with animals, and Buddhists do not really like wearing the kind of aggressive Sky humiliation “of the public appears to corner, let’s just assume it was the Chi Phi at UGA and move on. This is a better use of resources than usual.
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There are new beginnings for both Tiger Woods and Electronic Arts this week as he tees off at the Masters today and EA tries a radical reworking of its strategy for PC sports games.
The free-to-play Tiger Woods PGA Tour Online just launched represents the first EA PC sports title to be moved online. The rest may follow in short order as EA abandons physical media, says Peter Moore, EA Sports president. His thoughts on piracy, virtual goods and the trials of Tiger after the jump:
EA has continued to support Tiger Woods despite his widely reported problems, what was your thinking?
We are now in the 12th year of a relationship with Tiger - almost since he left Stanford - and he has been a tremendous part of our business for that period of time. He lives in Orlando where our studio is, he’s a gamer, our games are about simulating the world’s greatest athletes on the field of play and golf is no different. He’s the world’s greatest golfer until somebody proves otherwise and whilst we’re very sympathetic and very sensitive to the challenges he’s gone through in his personal life, our relationship with him is rooted in the golf and he’s embedded in our game rather than simply being an arms-length endorser which I think he was for many of the other companies that have since said goodbye to him, there’s never been any wavering in our support of him as a golfer.
Is this a testing ground for you in terms of getting PC games online and trying a new strategy here?
It’s a very different experience having to boot up your Xbox 360, load the game and play on a wide-screen TV, this is built to attract people who wouldn’t ordinarily call themselves core video gamers. What we are seeing is people who are actual golfers, that are 40 years of age plus, affluent, have less time on their hands, love the game of golf, play the game of golf - 90 per cent of them responded in our beta survey saying I actually go out on the links and play and we see it as a real complement to our core offering.
This is probably the future of how we continue to grow our business in a world where packaged goods media is flat to declining, how do you bring more people in who wouldn’t ordinarily be customers in the current business model? Having the free experience is very different and it can also be dangerous - our job is to bring people in with no barrier to price or equipment, only a very small download and you are up and running and it’s a good experience streaming right out of your browser.
How much is piracy a problem and the fact that PC game buyers are moving to the console because they prefer the controllers?
There are a number of factors and piracy is an issue. [Tiger Woods on the PC] over the last seven or eight years has declined every single year as people migrated to the console, but we still wanted to offer PC gamers an experience without us having to quite frankly lose money , and that’s what we were doing in the last three years of shipping CD-Roms for PCs and experiencing the piracy issues and sales that had declined from a peak of 8-900,000 units down to a couple of hundred thousand units, with no decline in development and marketing costs. So we said two years ago we’re looking at different ways to bring sport to the PC and today is the first day of the future of what I think is a very entertaining, simple to play, inexpensive bite-sized experience.
If it’s a success, what other sports will you look to move online? Golf looks the easiest to do in terms of keyboard controls.
Golf was the obvious one because first, we have the greatest IP and we’ve been the dominant player, secondly, there’s less going on when you look at the screen, the keyboard is dealing with a single individual. We are launching Fifa online around the time of the World Cup, albeit it being a slightly different model - there is a client download because of the size and scale and a lot of the game mechanic is a manager-type mechanic. But we will be looking at ways to bring all our franchises to the PC, and you can expect to see different takes on our core console games on the PC in the coming years. We are still shipping physical media for our Fifa franchise this year but it’s the only franchise that still has that and that’s to accommodate the globalisation of our Fifa business which is obviously very strong, but there will come a day when all of our PC games franchises will be totally online and that’s probably not too far in the future.
What feedback have you had on sales of virtual goods, are there considerable revenues to be earned there?
It’s going to be a slower burn than normal, compared to our core games which have a huge launch and then drop off pretty radically by week three or four. With the open beta, you could earn dollars but it wasn’t real money. Today it’s full commercialisation. We’re watching the numbers of people who are signing up to subscribe - at $9.99 a month or $59.99 for a full year - and the early metrics off the server show that people are already subscribing on Day One and those are guys who had a good experience on the open beta.
The other slice of the business model is microtransactions so you can go in and buy clubs and other equipment, buy power-ups and individual courses and we have buckets of points that you can buy that will fuel that.
Tags: EA
Nike has aired its first commercial featuring Tiger Woods, post-sex scandal. The commercial aired yesterday during Master's coverage on ESPN and The Golf Channel, and features a somber Woods, filmed in black & white, as the voice of his late father, Earl, asks the golf superstar what his thinking was, what his feelings are whether he has learned anything.
Nike said of the commercial, in a statement: "We support Tiger and his family. As he returns to competitive golf, the
ad addresses his time away from the game using the powerful words of his
father."
In the meantime, Augusta National has been criticized this week for limiting access to Woods, and trying to keep the focus on golf, while the rest of the media wants answers about the November accident and sex scandal. Yesterday, the head of Augusta spoke out about Woods, himself.
Chairman Billy Payne said during a press conference, "It is not simply the degree of his conduct that is so egregious here. It is the fact that he disappointed all of us, and more importantly, our kids. Our hero did not live up to the expectations of the role model we saw for our children. Is there a way forward? I hope yes. I think yes. But certainly his future will never again be measured only by his performance against par, but measured by the sincerity of his efforts to change."
• • •
The rep for Jesse James is joining Sandra Bullock in saying that there are no sex tapes of them, as rumors swirl that as many as a dozen tapes featuring James may exist. "The claims of sex tapes are untrue and completely fabricated," James' rep said. People mag says that rumors of up to a dozen tapes featuring James with other women, some including Nazi paraphernalia.
• • •
Shania Twain is joining the ranks of the celeb reality show. Twain will be launching a show called 'Why Not? With Shania Twain' which will premiere on the new Oprah Winfrey Network and "will follow as she begins her climb back to the top, a personal
journey filled with risk, revelations and unexpected adventures."
• • •
A second member of the 'Dynasty' cast has passed away this week. British actor Christopher Cazenove, who played Ben Carrington on the iconic show, died yesterday from septicemia, a blood infection. Cazenove's death comes on the heels of the death of John Forsythe, who played Blake Carrington. Forsythe died last week after a year-long battle with cancer.
• • •
Kate Gosselin's team of lawyers say that Jon's emergency custody filings make no sense and are full of holes. "It's hard to really understand it. We think that the filing is incoherent on a number of levels." Mark Momjian plans to file a response today or tomorrow, but is certain that the judge will throw out Jon's request for physical custody of the eight children, and spousal support. "We do think it is a seriously flawed filing that the court will
ultimately dismiss."
• • •
Speaking of Kate Gosselin, Hugh Hefner knows one thing for sure... Kate will never appear in Playboy. "No! No!" Hefner said when asked by E! News whether the reality TV mom would be a good fit for Playboy. He even questions why she is on 'Dancing with the Stars.' "I don't think she's a celebrity," Hef said.
• • •
Whitney Houston has been released from a Paris hospital after being treated for a respiratory infection. Houston is calling rumors of drug use "ridiculous." Houston said, "I'm feeling great. I'm just ready to move on and continue my
world tour." Houston will resume her tour in Birmingham, England on April 13, and continue through June.
• • •
'Screech' is in danger of losing his home again. Former child actor Dustin Diamond's home is close to foreclosure, as Wells Fargo Bank has filed a petition to try to recoup $290,000 in mortgage payments that Diamond has failed to make. Diamond's manager says it is all a misunderstanding, "He's been making payments and as far as I know everything's been going
fine on his end."
-- Dave Valenzuela
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