EA told off for using 360 footage in advert

The Advertising Standards Authority has put Electronic Arts on the naughty step, branding a recent advert for Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 as "misleading".

The ads showed Woods wanging a Wii remote around, but showed Xbox 360 gameplay footage at the same time. A member of the public with quite a lot of time on their hands complained that this was bad and wrong.

In its defence, EA told the ASA that footage of the Wii game "would not be of broadcast quality". It was pointed out that the ad did feature text stating the game was available for multiple formats in a bid to avoid confusion.

"They explained that Wii footage would not be of broadcast quality, and the originating agency had thought it preferable to use the Xbox footage, which was closer to broadcast definition, than to 'up the resolution' of Wii footage to broadcast quality," said the ASA.

However the ASA, which lives for this kind of sh**, upheld the complaint.

"Although we acknowledged that the message 'available on all formats' appeared in the final scene, we considered that viewers would infer from the ad that Tiger Woods was playing the game on a Wii console and the graphics shown behind him were representative of the actual game he was playing," said the watchdog. "Because viewers would not be able to achieve the graphical quality shown in the ad on a Wii console, we concluded that the ad was misleading. Woof."

The ASA ruled that the advert cannot be broadcast again "in its current form". EA is unlikely to receive any tea before heading up the wooden hill to bed this evening.