Come on Konami… whose side are you on? Twelve months in development for a spanking new format and you’ve gone and done an EA Sports on us - half a product at twice the price! Yes ladies and gents, Pro Evolution Soccer 6 on the Xbox360 is one of the games I, and thousands of other true football enthusiasts have been waiting for since the console’s release eleven months ago. EA Sports have already had two stabs at FIFA in that time and they have both pretty much disappointed on a massive scale, so it has been up to Pro Evo 6 to do the business. However, next gen owners have been thwarted once again by an incomplete product.
Let’s step back and take a look at the fine art of “Robbing Next Gen Console Owners”
On release day for the 360, EA Sports released their entire catalogue of brands at £50 (standard price for next gen games apparently - and which currently translates roughly to $95. *note - this in itself is a disgrace and I shall cover it in a future post) , but managed to omit large sections of gameplay, features, leagues etc from almost all of them. In other words, a quick buck which I was unwittingly party to in some respects. Narrowing down this rather cheeky band of games, we get to FIFA Road To The World Cup 2006, which is essentially a game containing the qualifying rounds for the World Cup (although it did allow you to play into the World Cup as well). Then of course, in June we had FIFA World Cup 2006 to coincide with the actual World Cup (this also contained the qualifying rounds somewhat confusingly). So essentially, consumers could pay £100/$190 and play the same game. Twice.
Only now in October have we had a complete FIFA (07) on the Xbox360. The same release day as Pro Evolution Soccer 6 on the 360. Coincidence? I think not.
Now let’s bear in mind that Konami have had probably over 12 months to get PES6 ready. Let’s make no mistake, visually the game is sharp. A real step up as you would expect it to be from last gen iterations. Gameplay wise, pretty much perfect. However, essential parts of the game such as the invaluable edit mode to change team names (i.e. Liverpool is in the game as Merseyside Red), player appearances, competition names; basically all of the aspects that makes Pro Evo what it is, are missing. Even replays cannot be saved, which is pretty poor in my opinion - especially when they can be on the PS2 and PC versions.
Speaking of which, all of the edit features and more are available on the last gen PS2 and PC versions, and at a fraction of the price. Once again, the Xbox360 PES6 is £50/$95, while the PS2 PES6 is £30/$57 and the PC one is £25/$47.
So why, once again, are we getting half a product on the next gen consoles and paying twice as much?
Just to add a bit of insult to the fairly immense injury comes the possible news that the “missing parts” are going to be available in the near future from Xbox Live Marketplace with a further cost implication. Shameful.
While the 360 version looks lovely, I’d just rather play a game that is finished; one where I’m not always thinking every time I score a goal “humph, can’t save that replay - AGAIN”. So, I’m off to trade my 360 version in… for the PC one and some extra beer tokens.
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EmP - November 02, 2006 (09:43 AM) Oh, look at that. PES just fell off my XBOX360 want list..... |
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