Noted manufacturer of Pachinko machines and operator of health clubs, Konami, has announced their plans for the future of the Pro Evolution Soccer game series.
Konami used to be a video game company, but they’ve been going to great lengths to scale back their operations in the games industry. Their biggest ongoing major project in the games space is Pro Evolution Soccer, but many have questioned just how long it’s going to continue. They still release a new PES game every year, but it feels like each year they are scaling back the budget, and sales of the series are now so dwarfed by EA’s FIFA that it’s not even a contest anymore. They’ve made efforts to push the game as an esport, but with limited success.
It feels like there are two options on the table for Konami with regards to Pro Evolution Soccer, they need to invest hard in the series to return it to its former glory and take FIFA head-on. This wouldn’t be cheap or easy, but it would perhaps help turn around the series.
The other option that would seemingly make sense to me would be to sell the intellectual property and perhaps even the development studio currently behind the game, to any of the other publishers capable of handling a game like PES. I’m sure the likes of Ubisoft or Activision would love to have a prestigious and long-running sports series under their belt, and they’d have the resources to go head to head with EA. Sega, too, would make a viable suitor, since they’ve got a strong brand in many parts of the world where soccer is a big deal, and they’re generally considered to be good stewards of the Football Manager series. I wouldn’t be surprised if Chinese tech giant Tencent would be interested, too. The international nature of soccer could make a popular series like PES an interesting opportunity for the right publishers.
At least right now, that’s not the path that Konami is going to be going down. It would appear as if they are taking the first option, and making plans for the immediate and long term future of the series.
Since 2013, the Pro Evolution Soccer games have been running on the Fox Engine, a proprietary multi-platform game engine developed by Konami. This was the engine that was built specifically for Metal Gear Solid 5, but it was intended to be used generally by Konami on a variety of games. Ultimately, it’s been used by Metal Gear Solid 5, the spin-off title Metal Gear Survive, the ultimately abandoned prototype PT, and a whole load of Pro Evolution Soccer games. I’d perhaps speculate that for Konami, it’s not really all that economically viable to continue with the significant work required to maintain a general-purpose game engine, especially with a console generation transition on the horizon, and especially if they are only going to be using it for one-game series.
Perhaps this is why they have announced that going forward, they will no longer be using the Fox Engine. Starting with next year’s release, Pro Evolution Soccer will be using Epic’s Unreal Engine 5, as Konami says they are “Taking PES to a Whole New Level ”.
“This title is being developed with an updated engine that will enable us to dazzle you with staggering improvements to all areas of the game. Expect more realistic player models and animations, enhanced physics, photorealistic visuals, and much much more.”
Since this engine shift won’t be happening for this year’s title, Konami has made the unusual decision to announce that for this year’s title, they’ll just be offering a “season update” at a lower price than usual. Essentially just updating the player rosters, and making a few other minor changes to update it for the latest season, but not implementing any major new features or changes. Players waiting for the engine update will have to wait another year.
They have a trailer featuring a footballer to explain this decision, although on reflection perhaps it doesn’t explain anything.
There are some more details on this blog post.
It is a shame to see that a very capable engine that generated some impressive results, is to be largely abandoned by its owner, not for any technical shortcomings, but because of strategic decisions at an executive level that undermine the engine’s usefulness. Maybe it will see the light of day again in the future, but for PES at least, the future is going to be in Unreal Engine.
Are you a Pro Evo player? Would you be excited to see what this engine change could hold? Is this year’s release being a minor update going to tip you towards FIFA? Would you like to see another publisher take over Pro Evolution Soccer? Let us know in the comments.