eFootball is a new next-gen free-to-play PES

Konami has announced eFootball, a new digital-only free-to-play football game for current and next-gen consoles, PC, and even mobile devices. 

Launching in early Autumn, eFootball takes over from Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer franchise with a new business model, and a new engine to make the football action more detailed and expressive than ever before. 

Throughout the trailer, featuring Argentinian footballer Lionel Messi, you can see a few brief glimpses at gameplay which is looking buttery smooth thanks to “Motion Matching” technology which “converts the vast range of movements that players make on the pitch into a series of animations, selecting the most accurate one in real-time.”

With help from legendary Spanish footballer Andrés Iniesta, eFootball is hoping to reach the “dizzy heights of next-gen entertainment,” thanks to the insight he’s shared in both his movements, as well as in “the thought process behind his wizardry.” 

At the end of the trailer, Konami showed off what’s to come after eFootball’s launch, with new content, cross-generation, and cross-platform matches all set to be added. Sometime during Autumn, eFootball will also receive a “Team Building Mode” which will likely be similar to FIFA’s Ultimate Team mode. 

Sadly not all the content being added into eFootball will be free, as Konami announced that “in the future, certain game modes will be sold as optional DLC, giving players the freedom to build an experience that follows their interests.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzd7OpCHCi0

With the FIFA franchise only making incremental improvements each year, beyond updating the roster of players, there’s little doubt that the live service model, that eFootball is using, has great potential to make one of the most popular and longstanding football games. 

eFootball is set to launch in early Autumn for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC, so there’s not too long to wait before you can get into the action.  The mobile iOS and Android versions are set “to follow soon after” according to the press release.