Konami's PES Team Lead Accuses EA Sports FIFA Team of Copying Their Game

[Steve_OS]

PES team leader, Jon Murphy certainly didn't hold back any punches during an interview with Eurogamer.

During the interview, he flat out accuses EA of copying Pro Evolution Soccer.

Jon Murphy: If you look further back into the past of PES you can see they've obviously gone from a game that was totally different from PES to one that started copying PES to one that started taking areas PES did well further into the product they have now.

There's been a whole series of - and I'm sure they won't disagree with this - taking PES apart and rebuilding theirs in direct comparison. And you see other things, such as the replication of players, which we're now bouncing back at with our Player ID. And there are other recent examples as well where it seems as soon as we're announcing one thing they're announcing the same thing as well. I'm not sure how that happens by accident so often.

What are you saying there? Are you accusing EA of copying PES?

Jon Murphy: Yes.

I wouldn't say they are actively doing that right now. I'm saying they have a long history of copying PES to get to where they want to be. People shouldn't forget that's how they got where they are. You can give them loads of credit for how they've got to where they got to now, and you can see it as a totally valuable product in its own right that does have ideas we can all learn from, but we shouldn't forget that PES innovated all of this stuff and they did copy it.

[MattyEdgeworth]

Re: PES hits back: Konami accuses FIFA of copying, reveals truth behind licenses

Very interesting stuff, thanks for the link.

[TGraen23]

Good article, but I don't like how he accused FIFA of copying them. He said FIFA claimed to fix gameplay as a main features a year after PES did also. You gotta be kidding me? It's a videogame. Every sports videogame works on gameplay each year. The player personality idea was just common sense also. Of course your sports video game will try to mimick real life athletes.

Just what I think though

Sent from my ADR6300 using Tapatalk 2

[RA30]

Re: Konami's PES Team Lead Accuses EA Sports FIFA Team of Copying Their Game

Instead of complaining about FIFA, PES team should take a look at their own game and fix it first.

Some problems:
- Horrible UI
- Player locking on passes
- Bad transfer values(Messi costs $12 mil)
- CPU player marking will often move away from the ball dribbler.
- Lack of CPU fouls and injuries
- Players getting tired after internationals, whether they played or not.
- Training regiments that dont make sense
- Doctors/Scouts/etc each costing up to $5mil each and Ronaldo costs $10mil. Values are out of whack.
- Shooting bar is just too sensitive.
- Not able to see the current game stats while match is in progress
- Rating system is only in 0.5 increments and only between 4.0 to 8.0 max
FIFA rating system is so much better.

So much stuff the PES team can fix and they dont.

[ruddamucker]

How FIFA was able to replicate PES (Winning Eleven in the US) on such an exact level is beyond me. It's as if FIFA absorbed the PES team and threw all of their money at it for licensing and presentation. FIFA became what PES was destined to be.

The Winning Eleven titles were years ahead of FIFA in the early 2000s. I would play FIFA at a friends house and just get pissed about how awful and arcadey the gameplay was compared to Winning Eleven.

However, ever since both series made the jump to next-gen consoles, FIFA has turned into a prettier, more polished version of PES. Take Winning Eleven 7 for a spin and compare that to FIFA 2004. The differences between the two are astounding. Play a game of Winning Eleven 7 and then a game of FIFA 2012...you too will think that the two are part of the same franchise and that FIFA 2012 is just Winning Eleven 7 nine years down the road.

Whatever FIFA did to replicate the gameplay in PES, hats off to them, because the only thing PES was missing was licensing and just an overall polishing in presentation.

I feel bad for this guy. He's absolutely right, FIFA copied PES. But with both titles having similar gameplay, FIFA is going to win a customer over 99/100 times because of the licensing, graphics, presentation and online community.

I wonder what happened to spark this change in FIFA...someone must have jumped ship from PES or was paid off to provide code, because FIFA has turned into PES, and I couldn't be happier.

[GiantBlue76]

It's amazing how EA seems to have this issue with their sports games. At least in Soccer they caught up to their competitor at some point. They still haven't done that in Madden, and their main competitor has been extinct for 7 years. Nothing surprising here...

[DBMcGee3]

He's right, they definitely copied several aspects of PES to make the gameplay more organic and fun, but as a gaming fan it's hard to be too upset about it. Coming out and crying about it now just makes Konami look bad. Give EA credit for spending their money wisely, locking up those league licenses every year and putting themselves in position to overtake what was essentially a better game for years. You can't really put a patent on gameplay I guess, and there are no ethics in business. The last couple of versions of PES I played were pretty crappy, and they can't blame EA for that.