Wow. I can’t believe the spectacular nature of Jon Murphy’s Eurogamer interview. You can find the article here:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-06-14-pes-hits-back-konami-accuses-fifa-of-copying-reveals-truth-behind-licenses-and-explains-seabass-new-role
I think Jon has played a blinder here on several fronts. No longer keeping his views on “Situation EA” amongst trusted allies, he’s all guns blazing! For me, this new bold approach could be the spark that PES needs. Konami for the last few years have not really strayed too far from their comfort zone. This year, we’ve seen Seabass take a back seat from proceedings to let new, young blood drive the series forward. That is a major boost in many gamer’s eyes, no doubt about it.
Whilst I won’t discuss his whole interview, there are a few key elements from it which have piqued my interest.
We’re seeing earlier interest levels in PES2013, with possible demo being released in mid-July hopefully. That to me is a positive and aggressive tactic. One borne from confidence in their product, more so than usual. Konami have acknowledged that the game has played it safe in the last few years in terms of trying new ideas and pushing the boundaries out.
Will this change in direction and more importantly attitude mean we are into a new era with PES? Whilst we can dismiss the usual questions about whether PES will take back it’s crown, this time we may have to sit up and take note.
We’re already hearing that there is no graphical overhaul to the game this year. This bodes well in my books. Back in the day, it used to take us a few hours to work out what they had done to improve PES. We’d have to play and figure out what had changed. Could those days be back? We only have a couple of months before we find out for ourselves. A very early demo which will no doubt not only serve as the proof of concept we need to see, but will also help Konami debug the game. It won’t be long before they get field reports from everyone on what is broken, and what plays well. Then we can expect the final demo to be much closer to the finished product, coupled with bug fixes found by you. That is a closer model to achieving success as we can hope for.
Something which can be picked up from the article is that EA have copied PES. Do many of you share this view? Is even drawing attention to this important? Personally speaking, I understand why Jon has gone public with this, as it shows that FIFA saw elements from PES’ game that they lacked. But equally, PES has lacked various elements that FIFA has in abundance – presentation and licences.
Jon has spoken about how Konami can’t match EA’s budgets for licensing. It’s the game’s achilles’ heel with the casual market, and it’s something they try to workaround as much as possible. There are those who must play with the latest and greatest players in each team, and those of us who value core gameplay over the shirts and names of players. Plus with the very many skilled modders out there, we get round this problem. Ultimately, talking about how FIFA has copied PES, doesn’t change the fact that PES is losing it’s core supporters in their droves in the last couple of years.
Konami accept that they will never been on an equal financial footing with EA, and will never match or overtake their sales figures. This is not in dispute. The essential issue is that in the critics’ eyes, and hardcore gamer’s eyes, PES is no longer THE game. Conquer this problem, and suddenly there’s no need to talk about how EA have just copied PES. No need to say that there is a media bias against PES. No need to worry about licences. No need to worry about sales figures.
PES has lost it’s acclaim and prestige that was once afforded to it in abundance. Sorry if I’m coming across as pessimistic or glum, but that’s how it is. But it’s not all doom and gloom, there most definitely is a silver-lining to every cloud. The question right now is, have Konami stepped up to the challenge required THIS year. We aren’t expecting a huge leap over FIFA’s game. We don’t expect sales to reach unprecedented highs. We want to see a game that reflects the prestige and quality that Konami were once reknowned for.
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fook you
Based in PESFAN preview, it looks like its gonna be another year playing PES 6 wich is not a bad thing. How can Konami have said that gameplay is the priority this year and the Ai plays exactly the same as PES 2012. Im not a Fifa guy but Im expecting to EA achieve something good this year with this new first touch system giving the game more randomness. Sorry foe the bad english.
Seabass taking a backseat??? The guy should be fooking Sacked!!!
I touched on this conversation in the last post’s comments section…I was saying….That all competing game creators do copy from other games and I’m pretty sure people could argue that at times it was the other way round and Konami copied FIFA but what’s the point in getting into that now?
It almost feels like a diverting tactic or excuses on why PES isn’t exactly what we want? The truth is even though I’d love to see all the licences in PES it really wasn’t before and definitely shouldn’t be now the reason the game is either good or bad. There is loads of ways Konami could improve the game without licences but they do need to be adding more and thinking more radical and outside the box.
Their presentation every year now leaves alot to be desired and considering the fact that they have the licenses issue you would imagine that they would have spent time getting presentation up to scratch by now??
What does really stir my interest and builds me a little hope was particular quotes that Murphy made when referring to Seabass and visions of future direction such as……
Quotes from Jon Murphy
“….because we’ve got him on new projects that aren’t directly related to the PES franchise as you would see it as the traditional model”
“His vision of football games hadn’t developed as fast as the machines that could run football games. He had a more traditional view of video games rather than a modern view of video games, which is to do with the sandboxing of games and the rewards that can be offered by that.”
“We’ve seen in Japan, it’s fair to say, for a long time a tradition of storytelling with a video game. Whereas in America or Europe we’ve seen a more freestyle approach – at least it gives the impression of freestyle. Obviously a sandbox game isn’t a sandbox game – you’re still being led by the hand, but that impression was different between the two cultures.”
He seems to refer alot to a sandbox type of game as the future direction they want to take for the franchise…I did predict before that the series was eventually going to go in this direction particularly with the ML and BAL so I’m delighted if this is true and I’m reading into the words right. My annoyance with it is that they don’t need the game to move to the next gen consoles to incorporate this change/improvement and it feels to me like they are hanging off in adding it because they want to be able to use it to distinguish a difference between PS3/XBOX360 PES and PS4/XBOX470 PES anyway lets hope at least now its on its way
Aren’t PES coping FIFA with the 1st touch?
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@Dennis,
If I remember PES said about the 1st touch before Fifa. Even def touch dribbling which EA calls something like total dribbling. Pretty much everything KONAMI said they will do this year and what they did last year is what FIFA is doing for FIFA 13.
I don’t see PES catching FIFA on online features. Oh man EA is way far better, but for me all these features are meaningless if the gameplay is bull****, I don’t want EA engine to play to game for me. I’m paying to play it myself so if EA takes out those arcadey stupid moves I’ll sure say bye to PES if KONAMI doesn’t address the online issues and SCRIPTING!!!!!!!!!!!!
But before I judge PES 2013, I’ll have to wait for the DEMO.
Despite all the criticism of from various media, supposed experts, etc. , I prefer the “feel” of PES gameplay, shooting, ball physics. The ball and players have “weight” to them. I have bought FIFA multiple times, thinking that there must be something to all the praise it gets, but all I find better than PES is the announcers and fan chants. EA are great at those to things. I can’t stand how the players and ball feel like they’re “floating” around the pitch. I don’t know, maybe its just me.
I want PES to improve every year, but for me, it’s still the king for gameplay. That’s why I don’t understand the comparison to FIFA every year. For those who think FIFA is the better game and has all the licenses to boot, why would you care what PES does? FIFA is out there for you to buy and it’s just soooo wonderful (sarcasm), and every year it just gets better (sarcasm). As for me, I can’t stand the way FIFA plays. I spent $30 on FIFA here in the USA, it was on sale from $60. I bought it because I thought it might be better online than playing the cpu (demo), but I was disappointed, again. PES for me. Looking forward to PES 13, and never, ever wasting money on FIFA again.
I think the gameplay of PES is more physical, I feel like I’m playing the game, every pass and shot. With FIFA its more like an arcade game, I don’t feel as excited when playing.
Well that just me….
About the poll – super cancel should not be scrapped!
If you press the pass button by accident, you’ll have to use super cancel to cancel the pass!
Bewildered why around 60 percent want it scrapped
So after filling us with complete bullsh*t for the last 5-6 years about how great each new game will be Konami has admitted that it lied and in fcat they werent really that good after all but at the same time insist that they are now telling the truth about how good PES13 will be.
2 Demetri, bro i agree with u 110%.!!!.
we all know that pes has all these licences issues but konami should try to get the licences fifa hasn t monopolised
when you go on fifa you notice that they havent j league greek league turkish league argentinian league.. so konami should try to get these licences to at least have more teams in the game
So next year they will say PES 14 is the best.
We have learnt from the mistakes of PES 13 and how terrible some of the things we tried to implement doesnt work..
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