Gamers desert scandal-plagued Tiger Woods

Sales of the Tiger Woods video game franchise have tanked by up to 70 per cent in Australia following his adulterous sex scandal.

The publisher of the games, Electronic Arts, stood by Woods even as other companies including Gillette, Accenture, TAG Heur, General Motors and AT&T deserted him. It blames the poor sales on Tiger's recent golf course performance rather than his affairs.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11, the latest game in EA's long-running franchise, debuted on the PlayStation 3, Wii and Xbox 360 in June.

But the company may now be regretting its loyalty, as a manager at one of Australia's biggest game retailers, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said in a phone interview that sales of the franchise had tanked.

"Tiger sales are way down ... I'd say we're probably in the vicinity of the 60-70 per cent mark year on year," he said.

Asked whether he believed Woods' extramarital affairs had any impact, the manager said "I think there are certainly some factors at play, and I imagine Mel Gibson movies are down at the same time".

US sales tell a similar story - game sales tracker NPD Group reported that first-month sales of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 were down 68 per cent on all platforms from the previous version a year ago.

Sales of the Wii version in the US are down 86 per cent, which Analyst Doug Creutz, of Cowan & Company, said in a note to investors was "catastrophic".

"Although this is probably due in part to the fact that last year's version shipped bundled with Nintendo's new MotionPlus controller, we are concerned that Woods' scandal woes may have permanently damaged the sales potential of what we believe to be Electronic Art's third most important sports franchise, behind Madden and FIFA," Creutz wrote.

An EA spokesman said in a statement that the company believed "a number of factors" had contributed to the decline in sales.

"But we believe the largest contributors are the slowing of the overall Wii software market and Tiger's performance on the course," the spokesman said.

Reviews of the game have been largely positive, with the Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 versions receiving average scores of 85, 78 and 79 out of 100, respectively, on the review aggregation site Metacritic.

- © Fairfax NZ News