This year’s PES is a ‘season update’, Next-gen shifting to Unreal Engine

Konami has shared details about this year’s Pro Evolution Soccer entry. According to the statement, PES 2021 will be paired back in scope so that the developer can focus more on the next-gen title slated for release in late 2021. A bitter-sweet moment for the franchise that is celebrating its 25th anniversary.

Venerable Japanese game company Konami is readying up for next-gen and in a surprise move, they have decided to go a different route for this year’s current-gen soccer franchise PES. By favoring next year’s title that is aiming for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, this year’s entry will be smaller in terms of upgrades and scale. The decision to scale back this year’s PES comes with a plus, however. For one, Konami is promising that the game will launch at an affordable anniversary price.

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.

Indeed, the publisher is describing PES 2021 rather as a ‘season update’ than a full-fledged sequel. But according to information relayed to PC Gamer, this is somewhat misleading as it will still be a standalone product.

Nonetheless, it marks the departure of Konami and their in-house Fox Engine that has been powering the PES franchise for quite a while now. Yes, the same game engine Hideo Kojima and his team created for Metal Gear Solid 5.

With the jump to Unreal Engine – presumably version 5 – PES is entering the world of next-gen. We already got a glimpse of what the newest iteration of Epic’s game engine is capable of on next-gen systems thanks to a demo that ran on a PS5.