EA Gets Called on Deceptive Tiger Woods Wii Ad
By Shawn on Wednesday, December 17th, 2008 at 11:16 AM PST In Electronic Arts, Game Companies, Game Consoles, Game Platforms, Gamer Life, Games, Microsoft, Nintendo
The Advertising Standards authority has called Electronic Arts on a commercial for Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09. The ASA accused EA of trying to pass of the graphics quality of the game on the Xbox 360 for that of the Wii. EA claims the image quality from the Wii wasn’t good enough for the commercial and they were advised to use Xbox footage instead. The publisher included the “available on all formats” in the commercial to avoid confusion.
According to Gamesindustry.biz, the ASA isn’t buying it any more than the rest of the gaming community.
“They explained that Wii footage would not be of broadcast quality, and the originating agency had thought it preferable to use the Xbox footage, which was closer to broadcast definition, than to ‘up the resolution’ of Wii footage to broadcast quality,” said the ASA.
“Although we acknowledged that the message ‘available on all formats’ appeared in the final scene, we considered that viewers would infer from the ad that Tiger Woods was playing the game on a Wii console and the graphics shown behind him were representative of the actual game he was playing,” said the watchdog.
“Because viewers would not be able to achieve the graphical quality shown in the ad on a Wii console, we concluded that the ad was misleading.”
That’s one commercial that won’t be seen again.
