EA Sports' golf franchise returns this June as Rory McIlroy PGA Tour, handing the franchise's mantle to the reigning No. 1-ranked golfer after a 16-year run with Tiger Woods, publisher Electronic Arts announced today.
The game will launch on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. EA Sports announced few other details about the game — no specific release date, number of courses or other real-life golfers licensed to appear in the game. A news release touted the usefulness of the Frostbite engine, which drives titles such as the Battlefield series, to rendering the scenic environment of a golf course on new-generation consoles for the first time.
Frostbite's presence also means there will be no loading times between holes, a major inconvenience of the series on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. That's because the entire course can now be rendered all at once, instead of hole-by-hole.
The hole-by-hole limitations of past games also meant tighter restrictions on out-of-bounds shots than at their courses in real life. On the Xbox 360 and PS3, shanking a drive into a theoretically playable area outside of what the game had rendered would still be treated as an out-of-bounds shot (with the one-stroke penalty). Now you'll be allowed to make a recovery shot, at least.
The old Tiger Woods PGA Tour series spanned 1998-2013. In 2013, EA Sports parted ways with the 39-year-old star and put the series on a one-year hiatus. Significantly, Rory McIlroy PGA Tour is not numbered, which de-commits it to publishing annually.
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