You could say that Utah-based Headgate was raised on the golf green. It’s hard to argue with its self-description as a “major force in the golf sim industry,” as the company is behind PC golf games ranging from Front Page Sports: Golf all the way up to the most recent Tiger Woods PGA Tour title, published by EA.
Headgate has worked closely with EA since it signed on to develop the Tiger Woods series on PC in 2000. Since then, however, the studio has been widening its reach beyond PC, as it developed Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2007 for PlayStation 2 and Xbox as well as Windows. In recent years, it has even strayed from the little dimpled ball, creating the PC versions of The Godfather game and Madden NFL 07.
Now the new EA Salt Lake will be focusing on Wii development specifically. “We do have two Wii games that we’re working on right now,” Cook said. “We also continue to do a lot of the work that we’ve done in the past, but going forward, our future will be exclusively Wii development.”
Although Cook couldn't confirm specific titles, given his company's track record, it's very possible that EA Salt Lake is working on the Wii version of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07, due out early next year.
Not surprisingly, Cook is a fan of the newfangled Wii. “We’ve spent a lot of time with it, and I love it,” he confessed. “It’s an exciting new platform, but I think it caught the whole gaming world by surprise. At E3, that’s where all the lines were. That’s where the excitement was. I think Electronic Arts decided that they needed to put more effort into it, and they wanted to do it quickly. The controller is of course the key to the Wii, and it changes gameplay tremendously.”
The PC played a huge role in making Headgate what it is today, but does the Wii focus mean that the studio is abandoning the faithful platform? “Yes, that’s what that means,” Cook affirmed. “Things always change, but the plan is that we’ll just be developing for the Wii.”
Cook also said that after a six-year courtship, the time had come for Headgate to officially integrate with EA. “It takes a long time to see an organization, and I think that Electronic Arts wanted to watch our organization as we grew and took on more responsibilities," he explained. "As we grew and succeeded, I think we reached a point where [EA] said, ‘Listen, the arrangement is working out well, you pass the test, let’s get hitched.’”
If anything, the marrying of the two companies shows that EA is quite serious about backing Nintendo's new platform in a big way. In a quarterly conference call to investors earlier this year, the company said that it would be shifting more focus to Wii development following the console's smashing E3 success. This acquisition is clearly in line with that strategy.
Cook will head up EA Salt Lake as executive producer and report to Nick Earl, VP and general manager of EA Redwood Shores/Maxis.
Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.