As a part of their 25th anniversary, Konami has announced that their PES franchise will be shifting to the Unreal Engine. PES 2021 will be a “season update” as opposed to a full-scale launch, Konami has confirmed, after a week full of rumours. Owing to that PES 2021 will be made available at “an affordable anniversary price”. That means it won’t cost between Rs. 3,000–4,000 like it usually does across platforms. Not just that, but there’s going to be a major overhaul of the MyClub and Master League game modes.
Konami is already focused on PES 2022 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, which is being developed with the help of Epic Games’ Unreal Engine.
Currently, Konami uses Unreal Engine on mobile, and Fox Engine elsewhere. Konami teased PES 2022 in a one-minute video featuring FC Barcelona’s stadium Camp Nou and their legendary star player Lionel Messi.
While this is the major change coming to the franchise, Konami has taken an unorthodox approach to the next PES game. It will launch as a DLC to efootball PES 2020.
“The sheer scale of everything we are aiming to achieve for our next-gen debut has made it necessary to pare back our efforts in other areas of development. As a result, we have made the decision to launch this year’s PES as a streamlined offering in the form of a “season update”. That being said, we are still extremely confident that this year’s game offers fans more than enough thrills to tide them over until our next-gen title is ready for launch,” said the announcement.
Lastly, as a part of the celebration, Konami plans to launch this year’s PES at an affordable anniversary price with several bonuses.