PES vs. FIFA

PES online has always suffered on 360, what with the lag, the patch and the awkward way of setting up matches with 'real' friends as opposed to pretend ones who you only know via their scary Gamer Card photo. I'd expect Konami to treat the next version as PES as a complete revolution, as it's their first chance to get a grip on both Live and PlayStation Network. The same goes for EA - it's a level playing field for me at the moment where online is concerned. Come September, however, I want to be able to save and edit complete matches and be a video pundit via EyeToy or the Vision camera... and download new kits, trainers and balls with Ronaldo's smug face mapped onto them. Online needs innovation beyond just multiplayer options.

But they've got podcasts, Rich! Podcasts! MP3s with people talking on them! Anyway we're drifting into vagaries so let's get back to specifics with the big one: artificial intelligence. Long gone are the days where players stood around in PES watching the ball roll past them, or when they moved along a pre-ordained trajectory to receive it. Whatever's still rough, they hide most of it well. Playing five (or six) star PES is an epic challenge, where getting pulled out of position is punished and lazy auto-defending is next to impossible. Even the goalies seem to know what they're doing. And the system of star player ratings - things like the propensity to shoot, the way Zidane's possession would influence those on his team to surge forward with him, the defensive star line improving your offside trap... There's an almost endless list of subtle influences mounting logically for and against you, and it's key to the illusion of football. What did you make of EA's "Threat Map" approach, which seemed the main retort?

The Threat Map stuff sounded good, but until you see it in action, over time, it's hard to see how effective it will be in practice. Given the EA pledge to make every player on the pitch act and move realistically (rather than just the ones nearest the ball that seems to happen in PES), I'm hopeful that FIFA 08 will have accomplished AI, especially if they've paid as much attention to the player AI as the ball physics...

And licensing. We don't know what the situation is with stats in PES7 for obvious reasons, but PES6 had four licensed leagues, 15 licensed clubs, 11 licensed national teams, some Reebok advertising and EOS logo placement. I believe the FIFA numbers are "a bit higher".

15,000 players and growing all the time. You can't argue with the EA bank balance and that FIFA tag. It's a battle Konami can never win - if we were marketing men, I'd be telling you that FIFA 08 represented the pinnacle of contra-brand game content and a constantly evolving, mutually sustaining affiliation with all major leagues, teams, players and tournaments, creating the most realistic soccer experience ever. If I was a marketing man, that whole sentence would be a day's work, and I'd also have to work in the words 'official' and 'tm' somewhere and invent a snappy abbreviation for that contra-brand thing. CBGC? That would look cool on a t-shirt, like CBGB?

Tum te tum. Oh, you're finished. Last thing on my list of talking points is the current-gen version. We don't know what Konami's plans are with regard to the existing PS2 fanbase, although we have to assume they'll continue to support them. But we did see a lot of the PS2 version of FIFA 08, and got to play it. And it's interesting to watch how EA's chosen to innovate and diversify in different ways, rather than simply doing a dumbed-down version of whatever's on next-gen. Joe Booth was telling us that EA uses it to help bed in development talent; he of course himself worked on the current-gen version for 07. You previewed based off what we played in Canada, and I know you were keen on the co-operative "Be A Pro" mode single-footballer stuff. Do you think that'll catch on? Are you surprised they haven't positioned it more centrally on next-gen?

The Be A Pro mode is an added extra. If it is met with a good reception, then it can move to other systems. But yes, I think it works really well once you get the hang of it - it teaches good football and it's definitely grooming gamers for the future event of 11 v 11 player matches. You have to understand that the fanbase looking for tech innovation etc will have moved on to PS3 or Xbox 360 and be online. If you own a PS2, you've probably played a billion different football games over the years and I think it's a great thing to make a real effort with multiplayer via the multi-tap as well as online.

And of course there's the theory of the hand-me-down console, as PSones became, and how younger brothers and sisters are - I suppose - better subjects for testing things on, but equally tend to group together more around one console. Anyway, that's it for this silly "conversational piece". I'm sure it'll persist long into the comments. And I'm abandoning our idea of closing out with a reader running onto the page and assaulting the thumbnail viewer leading to the feature being abandoned. I doubt we have enough Swedish or Danish readers to make that funny. As if that were the main impediment. Last word, Rich?

Word.