Electronic Arts is finally bringing their professional golf series out of retirment, as the publisher announced today that EA Sports PGA Tour will launch on March 24th for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S|X, and PC. The news comes following a one-year delay that hit the golf sim back in March of last year. EA Tiburon, the team behind the Madden franchise, is handling development on the revival of the PGA Tour series.
EA Sports PGA Tour is the only golf game on the market to feature all four men’s golf majors: the Masters, the PGA Championship, the U.S. Open Championship, and The Open. The popular “Road to the Masters" mode is returning and headlining this year’s game, as well as a new swing system EA is calling “Pure Strike”, which is said to provide realistic swing mechanics, and has also allowed the developer to re-create the actual swings of real-life golfers.
PGA Tour will include 30 courses at launch, with past major courses from 2021 and 2022, as well as the new courses for 2023 being added post-launch. Also included are THE PLAYERS Championship and the FedExCup Playoffs, in addition to the LPGA’s Amundi Evian Championship. Each of the courses has been captured with drone footage, LiDAR flight data, and terrain data to create photorealistic representations of their real counterparts.
Prior to the nearly eight-year hiatus the franchise is currently in, EA made 23 PGA Tour games between 1990 and 2015, with Rory McIlroy PGA Tour being the last game in the series. That’s all about to change, and I must say, things are sounding great so far. Luckily, EA also shared a gameplay trailer for us to see how things are looking as well:
