Almost the bigger news is that 2k has actually bought HB Studios.
This kinda scares the shit out of me. "The Golf Club" series of games are basically my favourite games of all time. I thought for sure that 2k would ruin the series, but the first game in the transition from TGC to PGA Tour 2k went better than anyone could have expected - who would have thought they'd make the game HARDER instead of easier, or that microtransactions would be so minimal.
The TGC Tour community is the best gaming community I've ever been a part of. Making it to the European/Elite tour was one of the most enjoyable feats of my gaming life.
But there's no doubt that the TGC series would be dead without 2k, so I can't complain. Here's a sales comparison before and after the 2k takeover I did months ago:
So, unfortunately we don't have any official numbers (that I know of), but what we do have is PS4 player stats from
gamestat.com which I understand correlate pretty closely to sales. Yes, that excludes Xbox and PC, but it allows us to see the general difference between the two titles which is what we're interested in as that gap should be consistent between platform.
The Golf Club 2019: Two months after release (the same amount of time as 2k21 has been out now) it had
26k unique players. After only two months we can assume most of these are unique purchasers rather than game sharers or used game purchasers.
PGA Tour 2k21: Two months after release it has...
450k unique players.
Wow. Whatever they paid 2k and the tour for the branding help... it was worth it. Big time. I am shocked at that jump. I thought 3 times more would be good, but this is like 17 times, it's insane.
Note that TGC 2019 ended up with
880k unique players on PS4, so with more time, some price reductions and two huge marketing opportunities with The Masters in November and again in April (even if that tournament isn't in the game) 2k21 could easily sell 2 million or more. It also suggests TGC 2019 had excellent word of mouth.
Bonus comparison:
The Golf Club (First game in the series):
8k after two months. Shows how far they've come, but also how they were struggling to grow the game despite huge leaps in quality and the addition of the PGA Tour license in 2019.
Another bonus comparison:
Rory McIlroy PGA Tour (EA's last game in the Tiger series):
167k after two months. This shows why EA abandoned the genre, and also that HB Studios has built a bigger golf community now than EA had then. Which makes sense, as that game was painfully mediocre while 2k21 is amazing.
So PGA Tour 2k21 has been an enormous success, hence the purchase of the studio. With Tiger on board, this series is about to go stratospheric in comparison to what it was.