Hmmm......you must be reading different forums to me. Many FIFA fans are genuinely impressed with PES this year on it's own merit. It's nothing to do with their frustrations at FIFA. The two games always have appealed to different crowds - PES has always put the emphasis on the football, individuality and tactics, FIFA concentrates on the televisual experience and neglects the depth. The two games have always been this way and nothing has changed.
PES is evolving what it does so well and that's what has captured people this year.
It's not about PES giving EA a run for it's money - PES will never push FIFA for sales - it's more about public and media perception and PES getting back the respect it once had as the purist's choice. From what I've seen of the demo Konami and the reaction around the internet, Konami will do just that.
Yeah, I didn't mean compete with EA in sales as much as compete in quality (though it's not news that FIFA currently has higher sales in some markets that PES once dominated).
The way I look at it, both Konami and EA simply have different visions for how to make football games, with neither approach necessarily being better than the other, but what separates the two games is that the quality of Konami's implementation of its vision is substantially lower than EA's or other top-rated games this console generation.
I never felt this way on PS2 - I always thought FIFA before 08 was a joke - and when I say I'd love to be proved wrong, I mean that I'd like to see Konami produce a game that fulfills the potential of this console generation. It's clear from this forum and others that I'm not the only PES fan who feels this way.
And no, PES and EA have always appealed to the same crowd - football fans. It's not like you must choose one or the other - FIFA and PES are not mutually exclusive - and I imagine most of us would buy both if each's quality compelled us to do so.
FIFA did not come to prominence in recent years because their was a massive shift in preferences - it's not as if more people all of the sudden decided they wanted a game that emphasizes, like you say, "televisual experience and neglects the depth" instead of "football, individuality and tactics"; the preferences of the market, reviewers, and "the hardcore" didn't radically shift. No, what changed was the quality of the two games.
I'm just hoping that the quality of the final release is substantially better than the demo, because clearly many of us are not impressed. And it is absolutely NOT because we take issue with Konami's emphasis on "football, individuality, and tactics."
