Konami have reluctantly revealed that a number of key features for their upcoming football/soccer title Pro Evolution Soccer 2014 will not be included into the final game. These include all the Spanish Stadiums, three quarters of the Spanish teams, rain (within weather) and the much-loved Stadium Editor.
According to the official PES community manager Adam Bhatti, the rain feature was omitted after having to:
overhaul the whole game and build it from scratch.
While implementing rainy weather itself is fairly feasible, we need to think through of how its effect shows through in gameplay.
He went on to say:
This includes the pitch becoming slippery, ball bouncing, some elements to make the team used to that climate somewhat more power in terms of balance.
We are going to try further this year to get the elements sorted and have them implemented for 2015.
With regards to the stadium rights and teams for La Liga, this was simply due to EA Sports acquiring the rights for their latest installment FIFA 14.
EA have been extremely aggressive with signing deals with clubs and leagues this year, and it has meant we can’t implement major European stadiums, including NO Spanish stadiums,” Bhatti added. “People were getting worried when they announced exclusive deals with Spanish teams. Well it turned out it meant we couldn’t implement their stadium, amongst others.
This news came pretty late to us. Which is where a time issue came in, meaning we didn’t have time to rebuild other stadiums to replace them. PES 2014 will ship with roughly 20 stadiums.
Last but not least, the stadium editor which is used quite frequently by PES users, was not fully addressed by Bhatti, with him simply saying that the entire team at Konami are going to take the licensing a bit more seriously now and fight back bigger and better next year.
If things are removed from edit mode because of licensing each year, it would rip out the soul of PES, and we must not let that happen.
All the other European clubs and their licensing have seen a lockout, so there’s going to be less teams with their respective crests and names than ever before in this years installment. The playable demo is out on September 11th a week before the official release.
PES 2014 is kicking it’s way to the PSP, PS2, PS3, Nintendo 3DS, Windows PC and Xbox 360 on September 20th across Europe, and September 24th in North America.
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