The future of soccer video games is set to look a little more interesting thanks to Konami’s annual release, Pro Evolution Soccer. The series released a teaser clip on Wednesday morning that gave a glimpse into the future of the game, and in a corresponding blog post, the PES franchise explained that major changes are coming, even if they won’t happen right away.
The trailer features Barcelona star Lionel Messi — the club and the game have a well-documented partnership, and a Barcelona player has appeared on its cover in each of the last five years, with Messi serving as the cover athlete for eFootball Pro Evolution Soccer 2020.
[Information regarding the eFootball PES series]
Taking PES to a Whole New Level https://t.co/v5OX0AA4qe pic.twitter.com/sOLoOcak6B
— eFootball (@play_eFootball) July 15, 2020
In an announcement to fans, PES explained that its eyes are set on the debut of its new game engine for next generation consoles, which will be tested in mid-2021 and is expected to come out later next year. Fans of the series won’t want to wait until PES 2022 for a new game, though, and the company made it clear that it still has something in the works for the consoles that are out now.
We recognize that many of you are enthusiastic for new myClub and Master League content, and we are also excited to share that large updates are in the works for both of these modes.
However, the sheer scale of everything we are aiming to achieve for our next-gen debut has made it necessary to pare back our efforts in other areas of development. As a result, we have made the decision to launch this year’s PES as a streamlined offering in the form of a “season update”. That being said, we are still extremely confident that this year’s game offers fans more than enough thrills to tide them over until our next-gen title is ready for launch.
IGN received clarification that there will be a standalone PES 2021 game in celebration of the series’ 25th anniversary, one that the company did note will come “at an affordable anniversary price and will also come with several bonuses,” and there are still questions about what the upcoming “season update” will look like. As for the engine, it stands to reason that PES will use the highly-anticipated Unreal Engine 5, which was announced a little earlier this year.