We caught up with product manager Adam Bhatti to learn more about the changes in PES 2016, what he thinks of licenses, and how Alvaro Morata ended up on the cover with Neymar.
Bhatti had this to say on the choice of Morata:
"I think he's a really interesting choice. I mean there are many factors and reasons why we chose him, but to be fair it's a bit like Mario Götze was to last year. It was a risk. Now sure Mario went on and scored a great goal in great tournament..."
[the deal was signed before that...]
"Exactly, and we made a statement with it. With Morata and Neymar they actually share the same record in Champion's League. You have Morata and Neymar both scoring in the quarter final both legs, in the semifinal both legs, and final. First time it's ever been done and they share it. That's not the only reason. I mean Morata is a great young player and fits more our strategy that we had when we signed Mario, which is a young star that we take a risk on. We want to keep the fans guessing a little bit."
The interview also touched on emerging markets, the importance of accurately portraying players, but in terms of their skills, but also what the look like and if they wear things like headbands or armbands.
In terms of the gameplay, Bhatti had this to say:
"The focus for us is making the game super responsive. We went back to try and distill a lot of what made PES on the PS2 days special. A lot of people say feeling, but we have to make that into some kind of binary code, computer program. And really it's actually the game being instinctive."
"For the first time ever in PES we have a true collision system. This allows us and the user to be very physical. These days in sport games there has been a lot of work on doing things like containment and backing off and letting the play go ahead. However we want people to get physical and sometimes it's difficult for a developer to give you an accurate system. Cause sometimes you get bugs and players colliding weirdly. However, listen, you might get some odd things happening in PES, but we'd rather give you the choice to get physical and see interaction which has been calculated than just have it just back off, cause the game might go funny."
Major changes like this (FIFA went through this a couple of years ago), can go either way and there is a lot of risk involved for Konami as they've just turned a corner with PES.
"We have gone through a lot of testing. Listen, it wasn't a one year project, we've been working on this for a while as well. And I'm just being honest with you though, I do see little videos coming which are funny which will make you laugh, probably make me cry. But it's something that we'll continue to work on. But we don't want to shy away from it as well. We have a challenge in front of us, and we have to improve PES in a certain way and if we're going to do it on gameplay we have to start focusing on these things."
Bhatti also had lots to say about the improved AI (his hope is for PES players not to have to trigger a single run - that's how good and responsive he wants the AI to be).
The demo for PES 2016 is due out tomorrow (August 13) across PS3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One.
"How confident is that? The consumer will play the game. I'm talking to you, and I appreciate you coming to me and speaking to me about the game. What I say to the consumer they'll appreciate. If you tell them your opinion they'll appreciate it more, because you don't work for Konami. However, they want to make their own choice. They want to have that choice. And we're giving it to them and we know the risks. Listen, we know if they play and they don't like it. That's our day one orders gone and people telling people don't buy it. But actually, no, we truly believe in this game so we think come August 13 they'll play it and go 'everyone needs to buy it'."