It's a debate that still rages on to this day, although it is not nearly as hotly contested as it was around 10 years ago.
FIFA vs Pro Evo, where do your loyalties lie?
It appears that for the casual gamers, those who love the ultra-competitive matches against their mates with a few cans or over the summer holidays, there can be only one game. Asking them to master two games, to shoot with square in one and shoot with circle in another is unreasonable. It used to be Pro Evolution Soccer, by a comfortable margin. While EA SPORTS FIFA was the king at the turn of the millennium and in the years that followed, Pro Evolution Soccer 3 started to turn a few heads, but next year, and PES 4, was what blew the competition out of the water.
PES, PES 5, and PES 6 are viewed as the best football games ever made by many, and there were no questions as to which game was being played as Konami's spectacular form coincided with a serious dip in quality over on FIFA for the years 2004, 2005, and 2006. But then it all changed.
The jump to the new consoles saw some very questionable PES titles released, whereas EA SPORTS were taking strides forward each year before devouring the market almost entirely. Many pointed to the change in systems from Playstation 2 and Xbox to PS3 and Xbox 360 as a big reason for the shift in popularity, but PES Global Brand Manager, a man by the name of Adam Bhatti, has another suggestion, and it makes a lot of sense.
Speaking to the guys over at Squawka.com, Bhatti explained that Konami's popularity in Japan meant that the complaints of gamers in Europe and North America were falling on deaf ears:
The team are more open to different opinions from outside of Japan.
In the past, PES was quite insular, people were working in one area, creating a product which they thought was doing well, and they didn’t really know how it was being perceived.
For PES as a brand, you can only imagine how big it is in Asia. Just how EA is super big in Europe, it’s tiny in Asia, and vice-versa when it comes to Winning Eleven and PES.
These geniuses that made those games [PES 4 etc] are still here. It was just making sure that they were being consistently reminded why people in Europe loved PES.
So basically, PES was so successful in Japan, that Konami felt no real need to change their game, despite the European market growing disillusioned and moving elsewhere. The competition from EA SPORTS and FIFA simply did not exist in Asia. Adam Bhatti has essentially been brought in to prevent that happening any more.
It's crazy to think, but it is refreshing to hear someone in a position like Bhatti to admit that there was a dip in quality, something which the most hardcore PES fans would have told you was just your over reliance on "better graphics" or "official kits" if you tried to make that point to them a few years ago.
PES 2016 is a much-improved game. There are still issues, but then again FIFA has it's problems too, and this author's personal opinion is that FIFA is a far better game to play against another human, but PES is vastly superior against the CPU, as the artificial A.I. that Konami pride themselves on makes the gameplay more true to life in single player.
Will we ever see a football game as universally loved as the likes of PES 4 and PES 5 again? We don't know, but Pro Evo is trying to win back some of the fans they lost in their dark days, and year after year they are getting closer.
[Squawka.com]
