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2k Buffed-up realism and a new swing mode that lets novices feel like scratch golfers from the start position PGA Tour 2K25, out at the end of the month, as a potential sleeper hit.

On the sports video game leaderboard, golf isn’t exactly first-page material. Take-Two Interactive Software’s NBA 2K franchise, which has sold over 150 million units worldwide to date, is the company’s undisputed MVP. While expectations for its niche PGA Tour series aren’t quite as lofty, the latest installment, PGA Tour 2K25, aims to change the game—delivering a deeper, more refined experience that could help the franchise carve out a bigger slice of the sports game market.

In the past, competitor EA Sports held the rights to golf’s major championships. But in 2025, 2K’s series lands three of the four biggest tourneys in the game, allowing players to chase trophies at this year’s U.S. Open host Oakmont Country Club, Open Championship stop Royal Portrush and PGA Championship site Quail Hollow. These are a few of the standouts among the 29 courses available at launch, with St. Andrews set to join the lineup in a season two update.

Sports games often closely resemble their prior editions, but HB Studios—the Lunenberg, Nova Scotia-based video game developer 2k acquired in 2021—was intent on taking the realism of the biennial release to a new level. That meant a full-scale visual overhaul, according to Joel Thompson, HB Studios’ senior art and animation director.

“For this iteration, with our healthy competition in the space in EA, we really wanted to tear everything right down to the studs,” he said.

“We went all the way back to our original head scans. We looked at our shaders, our tone mapping, our textures,” Thompson explained.

MORE FOR YOUSamsung’s Android Update—Bad News For Galaxy S25, S24 OwnersTrump’s Federal Buyout Offer Expires Tomorrow—As Over 40,000 Staff Agree To Leave: Here’s What To KnowMicrosoft Suddenly Warns Users—Go Back To Windows 10 Immediately “Lighting was huge—we had a dedicated lighting artist for this iteration. All that combined to take the next step in graphic fidelity and to in my opinion overtake our competition.”

These additions pump up the game’s verisimilitude, but PGA Tour 2K25 doesn’t just play to purists.

New to the game is Perfect Swing mode, which optimizes clubhead path through impact—smoothing out pushes and pulls making crisp, center-face contact is the norm. With ball-striking dialed in, flush hits become routine and birdie chances come in bunches, making it an ideal on-ramp for newbies. Skilled players, meanwhile, can crank up the difficulty for a more demanding test of swing stick precision. But for novices, Perfect Swing offers the intoxicating feeling of playing scratch golf right out of the gate—no years of grinding on the range, no mastery of past PGA Tour games… or, for that matter, ever wielding anything other than a controller. By broadening the game’s appeal, they hope to engage a wider audience.

“With every release, we expect that the game will do better than the previous one,” Shaun West, HB’s senior franchise director, explained.

“We have a goal to increase who is interested in our game, how many people are playing, how many people play at one time—and I think we did a lot of great things with this iteration to focus on that,” he added.

Pebble Beach

2K West also sees a tailwind from the success of TGL presented by SoFi, the tech-infused arena golf product broadcast that airs on ESPN. 864,000 viewers tuned into the inaugural season’s fourth week matchup pitting Tiger Woods’ Jupiter Links Golf Club against McIlroy’s Boston Common Golf Club that would tip in the favor the 15-time major winner’s team in overtime.

“I think the TGL is interesting right now, it’s piquing [interest] in golf on primetime during the week. It’s a new aspect to the game,” West explained, also name-checking the popularity of growing mini-putt concept Popstroke and TopGolf as entry points that help widen golf’s reach beyond avid fans of the sport.

“We focus on that area of the game a lot. It’s not just about the people who care about the authenticity and the inclusion of the majors. We did a lot with perfect swing and changing the difficulty settings to open up the experience. If you can pull a stick back and push it forward, you can have fun. I’m really excited about what that means for anyone picking up this game and starting to understand how to play golf.”

Tiger Woods, donning Sun Day Red, makes perfect contact

2K Players Weigh In How do the pros depicted feel about their digital counterparts? Matt Fitzpatrick, one of the game’s trio of cover models, alongside Tiger Woods and Max Homa, described the graphics as “mindblowing” and the accuracy as “incredible.” If he had one quibble with the video game version of himself is that he wishes the designers gave him more cowbell off the tee.

“I’m let down my power—delighted by my putting, but the power, was hoping for a little more there,” the 2022 U.S. Open winner said, though he is chuffed that his video game doppelgänger is an absolute beast at approach play.

“[Playing] the game this morning, I was hitting it stiff all the time, so I could do with that,” Fitzpatrick related.

Meanwhile Homa, a six-time PGA Tour winner whose 477-yard drive during the 2024 Sentry was the longest tee shot in the tour’s ShotLink era, has zero quibbles about the video game version of himself.

“I look really beefed up, like I’ve been in the gym which is awesome. That’s something I’m very happy about and the graphics are crazy. I know we all joke, but you play games as a kid and then look at them now, it’s wild how the features of a person are so accurate. They nailed it.”

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