I have strong sentiments towards Pro Evolution Soccer, despite giving the last five years of incarnations a hard pass. Yes, it’s been gulfed by FIFA in recent times, and I don’t know a single other person that plays it, but it was THE football video game franchise when I was about 10 years old – the title I played the most when I first upgraded from a Nintendo 64 to an Xbox.
It just hit different. A fun, immersive yet arcadey interpretation of ‘the beautiful game’, albeit with a terrible user interface and awful commentary, but a game that scratched an itch that many other ‘sports sims’ didn’t.
PES 3 through to PES 7 were some of the best sports games ever made, but Japanese based Konami’s mismanagement of the franchise’s western marketing strategy, and EA Sports pulling itself together after a rough few years, led to PES falling behind the, now, best-seller list topping behemoth that is FIFA.
And there PES sat, in FIFA’s shadow, gathering dust for longer than a decade, crippled by their competitor’s dominance of kit, stadium, and team licenses. But then, quietly, and unassumingly, PES started to claw back a few of the major team’s image and appearance rights….
Roma. Juventus. Barcelona. All signing deals, frequently exclusive, with Konami instead of FIFA (leading to Juventus being called ‘Piamonte Calcio’ in last year’s edition). An unprecedented pull in the tug of war between the two franchises, and a major step in clawing back PES’s once dominant market share.
And now, more than 20 years after Pro Evolution Soccer burst on to the scene like Micah Richards, PES is rebranding.
Pro Evo will become eFootball, a digital-only, free-to-play title. A monumental moment in the history of both brands and, potentially, a hugely significant moment in the future of video games altogether.
It’s a more customer orientated business model. Players get access to the game for free, but if they wish to have access to career mode (known as Master League in PES) or alternate gamemodes, they’ll have to pay for the privilege.
Konami’s FOX Engine, which bettered EA’s in terms of authentic graphics, lighting, and player movement, has been replaced with a new one created in Unreal 4. A good sign that the higher-ups aren’t running on complacency, despite the engine being beautiful already.
Similar to Fortnite, all versions of the game, from handheld to PlayStation 5, will be the same, meaning players can access their account even if they’re on the move.
All superb signs that Konami are giving their attempts at competing with FIFA a genuine, heartfelt go. But, in order to BETTER FIFA, Konami need to attempt to build a community, and get players competing and sharing content with their friends list.
FIFA runs on Ultimate Team. There’s no denying it. It made EA over 1.62 billion dollars last year alone. It’s basically a card collection game masquerading as a football simulator, where the player can generate coins by playing and then ‘buy’ players, on a live bidding market, to better their imaginary, completely digital team. It’s Pokémon for the guys who watched football when they were growing up, rather than Saturday morning cartoons, and it unofficially relies on friendly competition between people who play it.
Speaking to any other lad around my age about gaming and the conversation usually results in a mutual request to see each other’s team, and that is the lightening in the bottle that PES should emulate:
Give people a way to see what players their friends have packed. Give them a way to review or recommend players to their friends. Let me see where they rank or how many wins they have?
‘Pro Clubs’ is also a fan favourite FIFA game mode, despite being famously neglected. Fans have been calling out for changes to Pro Clubs for half a decade, but because it hasn’t been monetised like ‘Ultimate Team’ and therefore doesn’t have any long term benefit to EA, it’s pushed to the back of priority list.
PES could easily better it and, in the same breath, show their potential target demographic that they are willing to listen far behind the vails of EA sport’s customer service and community management. The ability to create, upgrade and control one player (with your friends controlling the others) and compete together in leagues and tournaments, should be THE selling feature for modern football games, and it’s an easy way for PES to make a statement.
In order to combat FIFA, PES…. Sorry eFootball… should attract casuals. Those that are only there to play with their friends or those who would only play a game because of word of mouth. And by being free, PES already have the PERFECT entry point to attract them. Add into the mix strong competition to both Ultimate Team and Pro Clubs, and it’s a good combination for eFootball to potentially knock FIFA off the top spot!
Matt Adkin 