TristanAbbott7
Starting XI
I think personally Konami will abandon the US market altogether with Winning Eleven on any platform, next gen. or otherwise.
You have to see the hate for the North American market on the Japanese gaming boards which unlike ours, are frequented by developers and programmers from the many Japanese software houses. They get really involved in their gaming community and implement a lot of patches for RPGs just out of popular requests on some of the major forums. Some staff from Konami were really, really dissing the North American market and the XBox 360 saying they weren't going out of their way to convert many titles for the machine. Apparently the dog heads this year in the WE/PES title came from a poll on one of the major gaming forums about what special heads the gamers would like this year. Another 9% of the votes swinging one way would have seen big cats (lions, tigers, etc.) and 12% voted for fish-heads!!! The Japanese are very into their RPGs and have online clans represented by animals, hence last years inclusion of the horse heads, eagle heads, etc.
They release PES for the European market as it's their big cash-cow to fund a lot of the specialist RPG titles. Obviously this also explains why the Japanese market can get 4 versions of the soccer title in one year while Europe simply gets one port. They released WE7:I in the USA as they thought it would have the same impact (and bring in the same money) as PES in Europe but they didn't figure that the gaming community here isn't driven by forums and online communities, but advertising.
Unless somebody figures out how to make the European/Asian games play on the PS3/XBox 360, North America will have no more Konami soccer titles to play indefinitely.
You have to see the hate for the North American market on the Japanese gaming boards which unlike ours, are frequented by developers and programmers from the many Japanese software houses. They get really involved in their gaming community and implement a lot of patches for RPGs just out of popular requests on some of the major forums. Some staff from Konami were really, really dissing the North American market and the XBox 360 saying they weren't going out of their way to convert many titles for the machine. Apparently the dog heads this year in the WE/PES title came from a poll on one of the major gaming forums about what special heads the gamers would like this year. Another 9% of the votes swinging one way would have seen big cats (lions, tigers, etc.) and 12% voted for fish-heads!!! The Japanese are very into their RPGs and have online clans represented by animals, hence last years inclusion of the horse heads, eagle heads, etc.
They release PES for the European market as it's their big cash-cow to fund a lot of the specialist RPG titles. Obviously this also explains why the Japanese market can get 4 versions of the soccer title in one year while Europe simply gets one port. They released WE7:I in the USA as they thought it would have the same impact (and bring in the same money) as PES in Europe but they didn't figure that the gaming community here isn't driven by forums and online communities, but advertising.
Unless somebody figures out how to make the European/Asian games play on the PS3/XBox 360, North America will have no more Konami soccer titles to play indefinitely.