PES team wasn't "prepared" for this gen

Shingo "Seabass" Takatsuka, PES producer, has spoken frankly of the problems the football series has faced this generation, revealing his team "were not prepared enough" for the transition to the current generation of consoles.

Speaking to Eurogamer earlier this month at the unveiling of PES 2011 in Tokyo, Seabass said: "As the leader of the team, I really wanted to create PES 2011 at the start of the current generation of consoles, but from the PS2 to PS3 that timing was very difficult for us. Looking back our team spirit needed a change as well at that time."

The producer's openness coincided with the first time Konami Tokyo had opened its doors to Western journalists, in a bid to reconnect with fans and demonstrate its promise of major "change" for this year was genuine.

"We've been developing PES for over 10 years since PlayStation 1," Seabass said. "Every time we release a new version we've found that the freedom of the game has gradually disappeared. We maybe made it too complicated.

"In order to make the game feel like PES, this perhaps became an excuse for not making enough changes," he added. "We were running in many different directions; today I think we're pretty much stable on which direction we should go.

"We're not shy of saying we made our mistakes in the past, but we want to use that to give back double, even triple the expectations of our users today. I think we can do that with PES 2011."

Key features of PES 2011 include a significant reworking of passing, defence and tactical systems, overhauled animation, and the long-awaited inclusion of Master League Online. You can read Eurogamer's extensive preview of this season's update on the site today.