Konami has taken a significant step to pump up its popular football title Pro Evolution Soccer (PES). For a couple of years, Konami used “eFootball PES” as the name of their popular title. Now they have rebranded the PES franchise to eFootball. eFootball will be available this Autumn on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series S/X, Xbox One, PC, Android, and iOS.
Apart from rebranding the franchise, Konami has also announced that eFootball will be totally free-to-play. This free-to-play game will directly compete with its biggest rival EA Sports’ FIFA franchise.
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We started planning this move roughly two years ago to coincide with the console generation transition and changes in the market environment. I believe that we have already proven that this structure can be successful on mobile. By applying the same model across all platforms, we hope that more football fans will be able to play this game on consoles as well.
Seitaro Kim, eFootball series producer
eFootball is powered by a custom-built football engine based on Unreal Engine 4. In addition, Konami appointed Andrés Iniesta and Gerard Piqué as development advisors for attacking and defensive gameplay respectively. Moreover, Lionel Messi and Neymar Jr. are the global ambassadors of eFootball.
The new engine will allow “Motion Matching”. According to Konami, it will convert player movements into series of animations. It kind of sounds like the Hypermotion Technology which EA introduced in FIFA 22. Along with it, the developers have also improved ball control.
Starting with the strong foundations of Unreal Engine, which has allowed us to massively overhaul player expression, we’ve made a number of modifications to virtually create a new football game engine that will power eFootball for years to come. With the added power of new-generation consoles and by working closely with elite footballers, eFootball delivers our most tense and realistic gameplay to date. We’ll share specific gameplay details next month, so stay tuned.
Seitaro Kim, eFootball series producer
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