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GE: . Pebble Beach has been announced as returning to the series (finally!). Can you divulge any other courses that might be returning, or any new courses that haven’t been seen in the Tiger Woods series? Perhaps some more fantasy courses that we haven’t yet seen?
 
MD: Our biggest returning course is definitely Augusta National Golf Club. We also have some great new courses appearing in the game like The Ocean Course at Kiawah Island and some great European courses like Royal County Down and Royal Birkdale. Every year we try to keep the courses everybody loves while trying to add some new ones to the mix.
 
GE: While we’re on the subject of courses, I noticed that there are some that are only available through the Collector’s Edition. Will these courses be available as DLC at a future date?
 
MD: Yes. All of the Augusta National Collector’s Edition content, including the courses, will be available as DLC.
 
GE: There seems to be an impressive amount of control and options using Kinect. Is the entire game pretty much playable via Kinect? And on the flipside, is the core gameplay going to suffer at all for those who don’t own a Kinect or still prefer to use a standard controller?
 
MD: Yes, we designed our Kinect integration to take advantage of as many of our new features as possible. We also wanted to make sure players could play the entire game using the Kinect. Everything from navigating the menus to physically swinging the clubs. In addition, to having a controller-free experience the game is also features voice-enabled controls.
 
GE: As far as PS3 goes, are the changes made for Kinect going to also be implemented into the Move?
 
MD: Yes. It was important for us that any of the new gameplay that could be supported on the Sony Move be included for that motion controller as well.
 
GE: What was behind the decision to not go with a Wii version this year? Truth be told, motion-controlled golfing for consoles pretty much started with the Wii.
 
MD: For Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13 and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13: Masters Collector’s Edition we decided to focus on the HD platforms and take advantage of the robust online communities of XBox and Sony PS3 given the new online and social features in this year’s game. There have been significant strides in motion gaming through the release of the Kinect and Playstation Move and believe fans will enjoy the true-to-life golf swing created by these peripherals.
 
GE: Have there been any additions to the career mode, or can we pretty much expect what we saw last year?
 
MD: In this year’s career mode we’ve redone the beginning progression allowing the player to choose between 3 different amateur series to come up in. From that point, your goal is to succeed as an amateur, break onto to the PGA Tour and ultimately become World #1.
 
GE: The Tiger Legacy Challenges are a brilliant addition to the game, and frankly, I’m surprised this is the first time we’ve seen something like this in the series. What brought about the decision to finally include it this year as opposed to maybe having it in a previous installment?
 
MD: While we’ve had features that revolved around Tiger’s PGA Tour accomplishments in past versions of the game, we thought it was time to highlight his entire golf career starting from when he was a small child until now. When you take a moment to digest the amount of success and the legacy that Tiger is stamping onto the game of golf in such a short period of time it makes for a pretty cool video game feature.
 
GE: As far as online play goes, there is now an online country club feature. Can you go into some more details as to why this will help streamline playing with your friends online?
 
MD: While I can’t say too much about EA Sports Country Clubs at the moment, I can tell you that this is much more than your traditional online feature. It’s going to change the way people think about interacting online in a console game.
 
And there you have it! Looks like Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13 is shaping up to be a pretty significant step forward in the evolution of the game! Thank you to Mike DeVault for his time and be sure to check back when we have our full review up.
 
And be sure to check out Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13 when it launches on March 27th, 2012.
 

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