There is a saying often used in football that “the league table never lies”. It doesn’t always tell the whole story, though, and often an important addition is that of momentum, both when it comes to determining likely future outcomes and when it comes to determining narrative. The team coming off the back of several wins has better prospects than one above them in the table on a poor run. The narrative of FIFA vs Pro Evo was for years one of Konami improving on an already high quality football game which EA flailed around with gimmicks and tried to catch up, but by 2006 momentum had switched.
Back at Pro Evolution Soccer 4, I wrote that “Pro Evolution Soccer 4 is once again a wonderful game. But it didn’t immediately induce hushed wonder in me in the same way as Pro Evolution Soccer 3 did. How could it? The further you refine, the less space there is to meaningfully refine further without ripping it up and starting again, and not doing that was Pro Evo’s strength”. That problem had become much more acute still by Pro Evolution Soccer 6, where Konami struggled to distinguish the new game from its predecessor in any meaningful way.
It’s great football, it has smart ideas like quickly taken free kicks and customisable goal celebrations, some licences had shuffled around a bit (good news for Manchester United fans, bad news for Chelsea fans), but it’s very much the same game. It looks the same to the extent that I was shocked there was no Peter Brackley call of “Pro Evolution Soccer 6!” on the title screen. FIFA, meanwhile, having finally settled on something good to iterate on, was several useful steps earlier in the same process with momentum on its side.
Pro Evolution Soccer 6 once again had a much higher first week sales figure than FIFA 07, but the details of that highlight another problem for Konami. The largest proportion of those sales were of the PS2 version which they had been iterating on for years. There were also a significant number for the Xbox 360 version, enough for it to overtake Dead Rising as the fastest-selling 360 game in the UK. FIFA 07’s 360 version wasn’t even released until well after those on other formats, but that was better than what happened to Pro Evolution Soccer 6’s. It was widely reviewed as slow, unfinished, and having poorer options, and players were advised to just buy the PS2 version instead.
The difficult transition, and just plain difficulty of making games for HD systems, was an acute problem for Pro Evolution Soccer. The significantly increased required investment of time and money to meet expectations of improved detail also had much wider implications for the games industry. It would help decide the direction of the newly beginning generation, and it would also incentivise alternate approaches – horse armour! – which we are still feeling the effects of today. Changes weren’t fully reflected in the league table of the charts, still dominated by the big names of the PS2, but momentum had already begun building.
Top of the charts for week ending 28 October 2006:
