I remember playing PES for years, and then playing WE6FE. I was absolutely stunned, I didn't think a games console would ever get a game to a level of realism and playability that was before me. Even my 60-year-old dad, who thinks every console is a waste of money and that games are "kiddies games" (every time he sees FIFA he says "why can't Pro Evo have kits like that, it's disgusting about the licenses, it's only a kiddies game for God's sake"), was wide-eyed and silent. In 20 years, he didn't take a single day off work, but on the night I put that disc in the PS2, he stayed up until 4am playing it, and ended up being half an hour late (which was the first time he'd ever been late).
Since then, every game (to both of us) has been "well, I like that you can do X, but they've totally ruined X" - "that was perfect last year, why did they have to do that?" - "why can't you do X any more, what was the point in taking that out?" - "have they still not fixed that?!". It feels like either Seabass has run out of ideas, or that he was a genius with the PSone but has no idea how to get what he wants out of next-gen consoles. All of the PES games since the PSone days have been a PSone game with PS2 graphics over the top (say what you like about the physics getting better, but in each new version players seem more and more magnetised to the ball, and the game gives you as little control as possible - I remember someone on here saying months ago, "try running straight at the goal in training and pressing shoot without any direction, you'll see how bad it is", and I was gobsmacked watching several players hitting shots wherever they wanted to. As if half the passes going to the completely wrong man isn't bad enough; I honestly preferred the PSone control system, at least it was fair all-round).
The fact that he's said off-the-record to a reporter that his team are too small and it's getting more difficult each year makes me incredibly angry. Business is business, unfortunately, but you'd want him to have the decency to say to Konami "look, I've worked on a shoestring budget for ten years, I make one of your biggest selling games and you're giving me fuck all here, there's no point in me making PES5/6/7 because it's going to be the same, give me a break and you'll get a few million more sales". Of course Konami will turn around and say, as mentioned above, "if we sell the same game three times a year then we'd make three times the money, and besides, we've given you £3 million to spend on licenses, you're bleeding us dry here old man" (and I'm willing to bet the licenses was more their idea than his, "if we can put the Serie A logo on the box and an England logo on Terry's shirt then we'll sell as many as FIFA").
It's such a shame.
![[CoN]sole](https://evowebcdn.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/data/avatars/m/4/4061.jpg?1472690089){kind=avatar}
