Deal of the Day: Spend Money to Have Tiger Woods 08 Play Itself For You!

This is absurd. I really thought EA was through with this, but I was way, way off apparently. You might remember that EA caught a lot of flack last year for releasing various premium items (i.e. you had to pay for them) on the Xbox Live Marketplace that were essentially cheat codes. That’s right; pony up the Microsoft Points, and we’ll unlock this, max out that, and we’ll go our separate ways. It seemed like that practice was going to stop, but that’s not true as Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 is sporting these same practices.

Released today on the Xbox Live Marketplace is the “Maxed Out Player” item, costing 200 Microsoft Points. What this does is max out your game face character’s skills. From the item’s own description: “Save yourself the time of building up your golfer, and instantly set all skills to 110%!” Wow, so you mean I can circumvent playing through the game if I pay you? I’m in!

Listen, I understand some people don’t have time to spend hours upon hours grinding their character’s stats to perfection. Some might suggest that these people simply should play as Tiger Woods, who is naturally the best player in the game. But, people bought the game and should be entitled to play as their game face character however they wish. This would certainly be EA’s defense – that they implemented this for those who don’t have tons of time to invest in the game, and that they aren’t forcing it on anyone. That’s great, but why not try using this radical idea: offer cheat codes (y’know, the thing you used to do) that do the same thing and don’t cost the gamer more money on top of the $60 they’ve already dropped on your product.