It’s official: PES 2022 will be known as efootball, a free-to-play game, and Konami’s iconic football saga leaves traditional paid installments behind forever. Such is the turn of the saga, that from now on it will be known simply as efootball, its new official name. This game is announced at the moment for PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X | S, Xbox One and PC, as well as for iOS and Android, and although free games always seem more akin to the mobile market, Konami makes it clear that its consoles have been and will be a priority.
That eFootball has been developed with consoles in mind, and that it has not been hampered in any way by the fact that it is also published on mobile phones. Speaking to our IGN colleagues, producer Seitaro Kimura explains that the change from the PES saga to the free-to-play format is something they had planned for two years “to coincide with the generational transition and changes in the environment of the market”. In this, proposals such as the free game PES Mobile have served as a probe balloon for the company, to verify that its bet can succeed.
“By applying the same model on all platforms, we hope that more soccer fans will be able to play this game on consoles as well,” he says. Of course, the fact that eFootball is going to be available on PC and consoles as well as on iOS and Android can be a cause for concern for fans, either because mobiles hurt playable advances, or because it tends to a more casual gameplay to facilitate its adaptation to all devices. And this is where Kimura makes things clear: “We continue to make games for consoles first. Then we take that same experience and make it available to mobile devices.”
“In other words, we are not making the game for mobiles, but working to make mobiles more like consoles,” guarantees the Konami producer. The company has given priority to the most powerful versions, and then they have worried about adapting the previous ones to these, instead of matching all of them downwards. “We ask our fans not to worry, we have made great efforts to adapt the visual quality of the game to the hardware of each device.”
A very different stance than EA Sports, who have deprived the PC of the next-generation enhancements to FIFA 22. eFootball will debut this fall on consoles and PC, later on iOS and Android. It will be a game as a service that will be expanded based on regular updates, offering 9 teams and a launch game mode, and with the intention of offering more game modes through paid DLC.
