Electronic Arts has been rapped by the Advertising Standards Authority for misleading viewers over the graphics of its Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 Wii ads.
The ads featured the sportsman swinging a Wii remote, but showed Xbox 360 gameplay footage at the same time, giving the wrong impression of the visual quality of the Nintendo version of the game.
The publisher explained to the ASA that footage of the Wii game "would not be of broadcast quality" and had included text in the ad that the game was available on multiple formats in an effort to avoid confusion.
"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.
However, the ASA upheld the complaint.
"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."
Title: Re: EA caught with misleading Tiger Woods '09 Wii advertisements
Post by: EasyCure on December 17, 2008, 12:24:54 PM
First of all, for some reason i kept reading that as "EA raped for misleading Tiger Woods Ad"
Secondly, I personally don't think its that big of a deal but i know there are tons of people out there that do. It reminds me of last gen when a multiconsole game ad would come up and my (then) fandboy-friends would squint to their eyes to see which systems graphics were being shown, which usually said "Xbox version shown" or something to that effect.
Funny how this gen either its clearly a wii ad or PS360 ad (with niether console specified as being the version shown off). Maybe i just dont pay attention to this stuff anymore, meh.
Title: Re: EA caught with misleading Tiger Woods '09 Wii advertisements
Post by: Mario on December 17, 2008, 04:45:49 PM
It shows they really have no idea of how people view games.
On another note, the Force Unleashed commercial shown here has to be the worst piece of marketing i've ever seen. It shows grainy FMV with some dark voiceover and then just boxarts of all the versions, when the game could have sold 100 times more if they just showed some kid swinging the Wii Remote around like a lightsaber. SO many people out there just dont GET IT! And it's hurting the industry, they need to be cleaned out.
Title: Re: EA caught with misleading Tiger Woods '09 Wii advertisements
Post by: Mikintosh on December 17, 2008, 05:43:29 PM
The nice thing about the old video game commercials that I've seen from the 80s and 90s is that they didn't try to decieve people about how the game itself looked; all attempts to make the game look cool/fancy were limited to maybe live actors acting out the game on Hollywood sets. Sony and EA set a bad example in video game marketing with this kind of crap.
Title: Re: EA caught with misleading Tiger Woods '09 Wii advertisements
Post by: oohhboy on December 17, 2008, 11:56:50 PM
This kind of rubbish started back during the 32bit generation. Due to the new fanged FMV, they didn't even bother showing game play. The ads for FF7 were exactly like this as with almost all PSX ads.
Title: Re: EA caught with misleading Tiger Woods '09 Wii advertisements
Post by: KDR_11k on December 18, 2008, 04:56:36 AM
The nice thing about the old video game commercials that I've seen from the 80s and 90s is that they didn't try to decieve people about how the game itself looked; all attempts to make the game look cool/fancy were limited to maybe live actors acting out the game on Hollywood sets. Sony and EA set a bad example in video game marketing with this kind of crap.
The ads from the 80s and 90s led to me not having any idea what the Zelda games even LOOKED like ingame, never mind what they were about. Why would I buy a game when I have no idea what it's about?
Title: Re: EA caught with misleading Tiger Woods '09 Wii advertisements
Post by: Plugabugz on December 18, 2008, 06:40:04 AM
Showing HD content on screen for 5 seconds next to the Wii boxart, when its transmitted in standard definition? And the ASA are complaining about this?
Title: Re: EA caught with misleading Tiger Woods '09 Wii advertisements
Post by: EasyCure on December 18, 2008, 10:33:03 AM
The nice thing about the old video game commercials that I've seen from the 80s and 90s is that they didn't try to decieve people about how the game itself looked; all attempts to make the game look cool/fancy were limited to maybe live actors acting out the game on Hollywood sets. Sony and EA set a bad example in video game marketing with this kind of crap.
The ads from the 80s and 90s led to me not having any idea what the Zelda games even LOOKED like ingame, never mind what they were about. Why would I buy a game when I have no idea what it's about?
Nintendo commercials, in the US at least, always showed gameplay. Sometimes they followed this sort of forumla:
Live action/real actors, weird stuff happens, gameplay footage, boxart (sometimes with system).
For instance SMB3 had all those people in colored shirts (live action/real actors) then the camera panned out to show they were standing in formation to create a giant mario that could be seen from space (weird stuff), then you'd see some gameplay followed by a shot of the box art possibly next to an NES.
Thats how i remember it anyway, but yeah Nintendo always shows gameplay so i don't know how you couldn't tell what the game was like.
I agree that PSX games were decieving way back when, you shoulda seen the look on my face when after always hearing that FF7 had better graphix than "all my n64 games combined" from my cousins and finally saw what the game (see: NOT the FMVs) really looked like.. Big ol' grin on my face :-D followed by laughter.
