FIFA is making the move onto the Nintendo Switch this year for the first time, and this made us ask about Pro Evolution Soccer's chances of coming to the console when we spoke to PES' Global Product and Brand Manager Adam Bhatti at Gamescom, but Bhatti told us that it's not as simple as it may appear.
"I mean, we've just announced support for Xbox One X, which wasn't planned until the machine was announced and we saw it, so I would say never say never, but for PES 18 the platforms are kind of laid out, and the game's coming out next month, and we're not going to make a Switch version in four weeks," he explained. "But that doesn't mean for the future, that doesn't mean there's going to be no Switch. We would love to make it happen, we'd really appreciate it if we could make it happen, but at the same time we have our plan, we have our product plan. So what that means is when we had our three-year plan for PES 18, and we took three years to make it, we've got this new three-year cycle which is really focussed on pushing the boundaries when it comes to the authenticity and presentation."
"All I'm saying is, for the Switch, we're talking about a console which we all love and we all wish we could make a title for, but it needs to fall in line with our resource plan and how many people we have working on said aspect, because if the bar is this high to reach, and we really want to hit it, listen, we could take away resource and move it over to the Switch, but it means that bar will have to be a little bit lower overall, because we've got our mobile action game that we released in May; we've got our management game; we've got our card collection game on mobile as well - we've got all these titles. We've just taken PC to G4; we're doing 3v3; we've brought back Random Selection mode, so it's about resource. We want to do it and we hope we can do it, but if we were gonna do it, we'd have to make sure that it's built for the Switch - we can't just have one game which is crazy and treat the Switch like a Switch. It's got to be a great title as well, so let's see, let's see."
Is PES a game that you think needs to be on the Switch, and does FIFA being on the Switch make you more likely to invest in that than PES?