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Conan O' Brien (
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Posted
Aug 29 2008, 01:30 AM
Another Tuesday, another EA SPORTS title launch. Just on the way back to San Francisco from New York City, where yesterday we had a whirlwind series of events and announcements culminating in
a star-studded launch event at Strata on Broadway. Tiger, as always was the consummate professional – prompt, polished, articulate and genuinely funny and relaxed. We began the day with a series
of satellite television interviews with Tiger discussing the game, as well as answering the obvious questions about his rehab (he is well into his therapy program, but was non-committal about a return
date to the tour).
We were also delighted to be able to announce our global strategic partnership with Gillette in the early afternoon, which will link various EA SPORTS games to the Fusion razor range. Centerpiece
of the partnership program will be the EA SPORTS/Gillette Champions of Gaming, a global online tournament that will commence in October through Xbox Live, culminating in a series of finals in Tampa,
Florida in January when the winners will be able to compete against one of the Gillette Champions: Tiger Woods, Roger Federer, and Derek Jeter. More details on that in the coming weeks.
Throughout the day, and throughout the city, we ran numerous tournaments combining Tiger on the Wii and some real putting in conjunction with our retail partners at Gamestop. The fortunate winners were able to come to the evening event and meet Tiger and compete for further prizes on the numerous demo stations that were scattered throughout Strata.
Tiger conducted various interviews throughout the day, showing off his gaming prowess to various journalists. Here he is walking through the fine points of the Xbox 360 version of the game.
Mid-afternoon and we’re off to 30 Rock for the taping of the Conan O’Brien Show. Tiger and Conan played a competitive (and hilariously funny) first hole at St. Andrew’s on the show, with Conan’s golfer wearing a kilt and sporting his trademark shock of red hair. Tiger won the hole, of course…
Here is Conan making a pre-taping trip to Tiger’s green room, getting his guest loose with his irreverent wisecracks.
Directly after the taping, we were back downtown for the evening event at Strata. Among the approximately 600 invited guests, we were honored to have several Olympic gold medalists join us, including Brian Clay, Misty May-Trainor, Kerri Walsh, and perhaps most excitingly, Michael Phelps. It was such a thrill for all of us at EA SPORTS to have arguably two of the greatest athletes on the planet, Tiger and Michael, at our event. I spent a few minutes talking games to Michael, and learned that he is relatively hard core – all three consoles, loves sports games, and was on top of all the new releases. He was delight to be with – humble and self-effacing but at the same time poised and confident.
On a final, and perhaps most important note, my hat is off to our development team in Tiburon. When I checked Metacritic this morning before boarding the flight at JFK, the PS3 version was tracking at a 90 average rating, and the Xbox 360 version was at 88. Both excellent scores and 8 to 10 rating points higher than last year’s game. Wii ratings are yet to come, but having the played the game for some weeks now, I know that version will garner similar ratings. Great work team…