PES Rebrands to eFootball And Goes F2P; Konami Prepars Big Changes
There is a real revolution in the football game series known as Pro Evolution Soccer. Konami decided to rebrand the franchise and switch it to free-to-play mode.
Big changes are coming to the football simulator from Konami. Japanese developer decided to abandon the Pro Evolution Soccer name and rebrand the series to eFootball. In addition, the game is now expected to be available for free. It will be released this fall on PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox X/S and Xbox One.
This is a huge event for the entire series, which for years was known as PES (or Winning Eleven in Japan). In addition to switching to free-to-play, the Japanese devs have abandoned the FOX Engine and created a new one based on Unreal Engine 4. What's important, it seems that all versions of the game - including the one planned for mobile devices - will be functionally the same. It can be expected that the popular PES Mobile will be shelved. Fans will certainly be satisfied with the introduction of cross-play feature.
The producer of the series told IGN that eFootball will no longer have recurring paid versions that change every year. The game will become more "static", with patches and updates coming out regularly.
Ex-PES will be released for free, offering friendly matches and access to nine clubs. It looks like the rest of the game modes will simply be sold as DLCs - just like the teams. No mention has yet been made of MyClub, the efootball version of FIFA Ultimate Team, or Master League, where we can run our own team over multiple seasons.
We still don't know how new teams will be added to the game and how the financial aspect of the series will look like. In any case, Konami reassures us that the title will not be a typical "pay to win" game, where players who throw their money at the devs are favoured - everything is supposed to be fair and balanced. There will also be Match Passes, which refer to battle passes known from online shooters that provide additional content to the game.
You can not help feeling that there are many similarities between the new, free vision of the eFootball series and the know demo versions subtitled Lite. In the case of eFootball PES 2021 Lite we were dealing with a truncated version of the main game, which can be downloaded completely free of charge. The players were offered access to myClub modes, local matches, trainings and "Matchday", where we can take part in special events referring to real football clashes. Team roster was also limited.
The switch to a different engine was intended to help Konami introduce a new animation system, which is said to be four times richer. The technology is also set to be introduced on mobile devices.
More about the new part eFootball will be revealed in August. Now the situation is presented by a general roadmap for the game.
Roadmap for the game.
