Joystiq interviews Wes Culver, Tiger Woods Wii designer

After recently playing Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 for the Wii, we asked several questions of Wes Culver, lead designer of the game on that platform. In our brief interview, he discussed specific changes between the Wii game and the title on other systems, and he also described how the Wii's horsepower stacks up against the other consoles.

What are the differences between Tiger Woods on the Wii and the other platforms?

So the difference between the Wii and the other platforms is obviously the control. All the gameplay controls have been totally redone to take advantage of the Wii Remote. If you want to, you can even go back and plug in the Nunchuk to get the analog swing. You can do that, and you play it as you would on the PS2 or the Xbox 360. But everything from the swing, the draw and fades, the spin -- all that sutff has been mapped to the Wii Remote, one way or another.

Are there differences in options or modes between the systems?

There are minor mode differences, but for the most part we try to keep as much content as possible while keeping it fun, keeping it fresh. So the Tiger Challenge will have more game modes built-in which are brand new for Wii. We carried over fun arcade game modes like Skills 18, Target2Target, T-I-G-E-R, and Battle Golf. We have all of the regular, official modes like stroke play, match play ... so we have a lot for future golf fans.

What about differences in the quality between the systems? Was it harder to develop for the Wii?

It's harder ... are you talking like as far as the horsepower ...?

Yes.

So the horsepower of the Wii is not quite up to the par of the 360. It's a little bit better than what we saw on the Xbox and PS2. So the graphics fall somewhere in between, you know, the PS2/Xbox and the 360. We do support 480p widescreen, we updated a lot of textures; the sky domes, and the courses were all retouched, so they are updated as far as better than PS2 and Xbox. But they're not as up to par as Xbox 360 and PS3, which is understandable because that's what Nintendo is kind of going for. They're just trying to revolutionize the gameplay, instead of revolutionize graphics.

I think the biggest thing is the real golf fans get a great experience from Tiger because everything -- they can play the game as they would play on the course. They can have their natural golf, their natural slice. I have a natural slice myself, and I slice it in the game, so that is like proof of pudding that our swing is as close as any game has come as far as a real golf swing -- a real golf simulator. We feel that that is the biggest selling point for this title.