Tiger Woods 11 Sales Even Worse Than Initially Thought

Late last week NPD released the official sales numbers for June. Tiger Woods 11 saw a huge drop-off from what Tiger 10 sold in its first month. Given the numbers that were on hand I estimated that it had fallen in the 40-50% range. It turns out that the situation was even more dire than anticipated. Sales actually dropped 68% year-over-year for all formats combined while the Wii version specifically fell an almost unbelievable 86%. It went from 272K to 38K.

The main factor in the plummeting sales was of course the tarnishing of Tiger Woods’ reputation, which especially impacted the Wii version that carries a very heavily slanted family-friendly user base. The Tiger franchise has always sold well on the Wii as the most successful EA Sports game on that console. Last year there was a MotionPlus bundle which inflated sales a bit, but certainly not to the extent that would explain such a tremendous plummet.

Some are pointing to less in the way of marketing as another reason to consider, though that is a direct symptom of the issue EA faced by keeping Tiger on as the face of the game. They could no longer promote him, and in turn the game, in the same manner and to the same extent as they had in the past. Clearly EA Sports has little choice but to make drastic changes now. Whether that means a rebranding of the franchise remains to be seen.