UEFA Euro 2008

stickyfingers said:
Unfortunately, I agree that 09 might well be their last chance (and I alluded to such earlier in this thread), and in a word, here's why - "licensing."

More and more folks are choosing next-gen consoles as their platform(s) of choice, and less and less folks are PC-based, which means the market has pretty clearly moved to consoles, and that's where you need to be strong to be profitable.

Even _if_ PES 08 had been really good, it would have been an unsatisfying experience on the XB 360, as there's no way to _really_ edit the players (kits, badges, names, commentary) on the XB 360 as many of us have taken for granted over the years of playing PES on our PCs.

Even on the PCs, I think many folks were only "putting up with" the modding because the gameplay was _so much_ better on PES.

As EA closes that gap, even to "close enough," less and less folks will go through the mod hassles and just start playing FIFA.

Here in the States we've actually seen the original gambit from which EA's licensing playbook is now based.

In the late 90s, Visual Concepts (VC) released their NFL (American) football property, NFL 2K, to rave reviews. Over they years, VC continued to improve the 2K gameplay and was fairly regularly receiving better reviews (from both players and game zines) than EAs Madden series.

In 2004, someone at EA realized they could end this whole arms race (which, while being of _great_ benefit to the NFL game players, was wasting dollars EA could simply keep in their coffers) by locking up the rights to NFL teams/players by securing an exclusive licensing deal.

...and that was the end of VC's NFL entries. All the gameplay in the world wouldn't matter if gamers couldn't play with the real players.

That is where EA is headed with (European) football now, the only difference is that with American football, they had (recently) been a market leader, so relatively minor improvements in gameplay combined with exclusive licensing was able to kill the competition.

With European football, EA has never (until now) had a product which (legitimate) fans would mention in the same breath as the PES series, so they had to make serious improvements to the gameplay before any real gamers would give a fat rat's ass about their licenses.

I think they've closed that gap considerably, and for all the reasons above, I do think if PES 09 is a flop again, then Konami runs the risk of killing the golden goose entirely.

As a footnote, even if PES 09 is a winner, Konami is either going to need to pony up and secure a licensing agreement (which, given the depth of EA's pockets, I don't think they can do) or introduce a vastly improved editor over what they provided with PES 08, one which allows communities to share their creations - if not, I think they still might find themselves in the deep water...
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I respect your argument but I don't agree simply because PES built up a huge fan base on the back of a game with a dearth of teams, let alone licensed ones. The gameplay won people over and if they come up with something as sensational as PES originally was (for it's time), people will go back to it. And many people think the PES2008 just needs a few tweaks to sort it out anyway.

That's not to say people are leaving PES in droves anyway - they still have a huge loyal following, not least in the press. You just have to look at the reviews for the awful PES2008, with reviewers still describing it as footballing heaven and dismissing FIFA as the same old crap it's always been.

Incidently, I'm quite glad to see FIFA and more surprisingly, Euro08 get some pretty poor review scores. With the praise being lauded on EA by places like this forum, particularly at a time when a lot of us are dissing PES, EA could easily get complacement and really cut back on effort to innovate and improve. Poor reviews will keep them on their toes.

Anyway, as regards the demise of PES, I'll happily bet you that it'll still be going strong in 5 years time. Whether or not I will actually like it is another matter...
 
PTGamer's Article said:
(...)

The main game mode is called Captain Your Country and it consists on fighting for the captain armbrand of a national team. Using the Be a Pro mode concept, this game mode will allow you to compete against 3 players (which can be controlled either by the AI or human players). So, each one of these 4 players will be rated in real time based on their performance - succesful passes, dangerous shots, goals, and so on. Besides, the role you've chosen to play will affect your overall rating - this means that if you decide you will play as a defender, going forward too many times won't be a bright idea. To help you with the whole positioning issue, EA have added a few options - arrows to indicate the zone you're supposed to play on and circles to point the players you're supposed to mark.

This new system adds a lot more depth to the Be a Pro mode available in FIFA08, allowing you to play alone or with friends. After each match you will be rated accordingly to what you did on the pitch and the player with the higher rating will be given the captain armbrand. And what does this mean? Well, this means you will be able to manage your team to a certain extent - make substitutions and change the team tactics. Besides, this game mode is quite interesting due to the fact that being a "mere" player will create a unique environment. Play badly for a few matches in a row and see the manager dropping you out of the final 23.

(...)

But there's more. The scenario mode is back and is now called Story of Qualifying. You will be given different tasks, related to what happened during the qualification stages. These challenges are followed by a detailed text regarding the real situation. Besides, there are also challenges involving the Be a Pro mode - you will have to score important goals with a specific player. These challenges are pretty hard and are sorted by difficulty level.

(...)

The online mode has been improved as well. Apart from the Battle of Nations, the new system EA have developed to rank each national team according to both the offline and online results, there is now the possibility to set up the real competition, up to 16 teams.

(...)
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JB asked me to translate this article of a portuguese gaming website. Even though most of the stuff mentioned has been around for some time, there were a few details I hadn't heard of. I've summed up the new bits.
 
winston said:
I respect your argument but I don't agree simply because PES built up a huge fan base on the back of a game with a dearth of teams, let alone licensed ones. The gameplay won people over and if they come up with something as sensational as PES originally was (for it's time), people will go back to it. And many people think the PES2008 just needs a few tweaks to sort it out anyway.

That's not to say people are leaving PES in droves anyway - they still have a huge loyal following, not least in the press. You just have to look at the reviews for the awful PES2008, with reviewers still describing it as footballing heaven and dismissing FIFA as the same old crap it's always been.

Incidently, I'm quite glad to see FIFA and more surprisingly, Euro08 get some pretty poor review scores. With the praise being lauded on EA by places like this forum, particularly at a time when a lot of us are dissing PES, EA could easily get complacement and really cut back on effort to innovate and improve. Poor reviews will keep them on their toes.

Anyway, as regards the demise of PES, I'll happily bet you that it'll still be going strong in 5 years time. Whether or not I will actually like it is another matter...
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:applause:
 
Jack Bauer said:
More people will be getting it on the 360 and online play is the best aspect of football games IMO (didn't used to be but it is now thanks to Online Leagues). I know 50+ people who play FIFA regularly on 360, 5+ on PS3.

So I would only get it on 360 personally but obviously it depends on who you know and what you want to do with the game.
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Cheers, 360 wins it I think.

now to find a good deal :-)

Hopefully see you online
 
Gamespot UK hands on

The most obvious change, outside of the specific European Championship modes, is the speed of the game. The players look and feel slightly faster, which we were told was a result of player feedback about the speed of FIFA 08. The players' speed has increased 6 percent, apparently, and their acceleration curves have been steepened so that they're faster out of the blocks. Irrespective of the numbers you can feel the marked difference, as it does make the game feel faster and more easily flowing.

There are some other pitch-side changes in standard modes. The AI has been noticeably tweaked for the championship qualification modes in an attempt to give players an incentive to play through the long qualifying campaigns. When playing as England, for example, we found taking on Macedonia as difficult as Steve McClaren did; the AI stuck lots of players behind the ball, who then proceeded to tackle as though their lives depended on it.

The crowd noises have been changed to reflect the atmosphere of matches such as this, too; when playing away in Eastern Europe, we noticed the noise ratcheting up higher and higher as we kept the ball away from the home side and frustrations rose. A couple of goals served to quiet them down, but the initial noise did serve to increase the tension and make getting that all-important result that little bit harder.
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http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/spo...6188872&part=rss&tag=gs_xbox_360&subj=6188872

Sounds good :))
 
"UEFA Euro 2008 is released at the end of this week, so look out for our full review soon."

Now i´m confused...
 
Gamespot said:
...but the initial noise did serve to increase the tension and make getting that all-important result that little bit harder.
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The noise made the game harder :LOL:

They also say that the game is due out "at the end of this week". That's about the 5th time I've seen this mentioned. Why do all the on-line shops still say end of next week?
 
winston said:
I respect your argument but I don't agree simply because PES built up a huge fan base on the back of a game with a dearth of teams, let alone licensed ones. The gameplay won people over and if they come up with something as sensational as PES originally was (for it's time), people will go back to it. And many people think the PES2008 just needs a few tweaks to sort it out anyway.

That's not to say people are leaving PES in droves anyway - they still have a huge loyal following, not least in the press. You just have to look at the reviews for the awful PES2008, with reviewers still describing it as footballing heaven and dismissing FIFA as the same old crap it's always been.

Incidently, I'm quite glad to see FIFA and more surprisingly, Euro08 get some pretty poor review scores. With the praise being lauded on EA by places like this forum, particularly at a time when a lot of us are dissing PES, EA could easily get complacement and really cut back on effort to innovate and improve. Poor reviews will keep them on their toes.

Anyway, as regards the demise of PES, I'll happily bet you that it'll still be going strong in 5 years time. Whether or not I will actually like it is another matter...
Click to expand...

PES overcame the licensing issue for two reasons (separate but related) great gameplay which was well above any competitor and the community support for modding the game to reinstate actual teams/players.

OF editing/installing has become much more of a pain in the ass with PES 08 (8 kits?!) (and the (slim) possibility that OF "trading" might get users banned from XBL) and, if they continue to close off that window AND FIFA continues to produce higher quality footy games, then I do think they're in big trouble (for all the reasons in my longer post)...
 
Please say it's out this week.

Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease.

(Thanks a lot for that translation by the way Miguel, YOU ARE A STAR)
 
I think someone has there wires crossed and got wrong date be good if it was this week.

Might plop a post on Shopto forum see when stock due in. :))
 
It's out next week. I think they just got it wrong because it was due out this week until a month or so ago.
 
From the Gamespot-hands-on:
When you first go online with Euro 2008, you are asked to enter the country you want to represent, and all your in-game scores are then tied to that country, no matter which team you play as. When you get down to actually playing some football, if you opt to play as, say, France, and beat the Faroe Islands 5-0 then you're likely to get somewhere in the region of 200 points, but a 1-0 victory the other way around would net you in excess of 2,000, thus encouraging better players to play as weaker teams to rack up higher scores, and keep things interesting for less-experienced players.
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This is a fantastic idea to get rid of all the players playing with top-teams. Konami should steal this one from EA :DD
 
Han said:
From the Gamespot-hands-on:

This is a fantastic idea to get rid of all the players playing with top-teams. Konami should steal this one from EA :DD
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still not good enough this is only for battle for your nation u should be picking up 300-400 rank points on ranked games if u beat som1 one ten times with faroe islands while they use france... so you could be top 100 in the world if had a 10-0 record with faroe islands.... and beat top 1000 people with faroe islands if thats how it works out you would see me with the small teams non stop
 
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Han said:
From the Gamespot-hands-on:

This is a fantastic idea to get rid of all the players playing with top-teams. Konami should steal this one from EA :DD
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There will still be all those tools who only care about their "vs" record and insist on picking all the best sides, Italy/Spain/Germany/USA, in each online match...













I had to try and give my country a bit of love, even if we're not Euro eligible - good thing for the Poles...
 
sweetkilla said:
still not good enough this is only for battle for your nation u should be picking up 300-400 rank points on ranked games if u beat som1 one ten times with faroe islands while they use france... so you could be top 100 in the world if had a 10-0 record with faroe islands.... and beat top 1000 people with faroe islands if thats how it works out you would see me with the small teams non stop
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In fact it works like a handicap-system. Only thing I wonder is if the weak teams are really weak, like in PES. If not, it is worthless.
 
bought this game from ebay, the shop said my order is being dispatched today...i couldn't believe it then further down i read, please allow 15 days for delivery ha ha....fuckers!!!!!!!!
 
I don't think PES will win people over again...
When PES properly gained popularity and a lot of fans (around the time of PES3), it had games like Fifa 2003/4 and Club Football to compete against... Not exactly the hardest games to totally blow away in the gameplay department, Konami did that and have stuck by almost the same game since without caring about the opposition (Fifa) because of the following it picked up by staying the best game on the market because EA couldn't be arsed...
Now EA have finally pulled their socks up in the last 2 years and have become real competitors in every department, and I even think they have overtaken PES' only better feature, it's gameplay.
This has probably shocked Konami as they expected EA to have their usual lazy attitude and the change forced them into rushing out a "next-gen" game, PES 2008.

Also, times have changed, gone are the days when most people will be happy with generic plain kits and fake names just because a game plays well. People won't happily shell out money for a HDTV, PS3/360 and all the stuff to go with it and then look at fake stuff.
 
Just noticed on SportsGamer.com (which is a GameSpot-run site, so they're not a bunch of know-nothings), in their Euro 2008 demo article, they say; "despite this being an incomplete build of the game, the changes that we have already seen are more than enough to get us excited for the release."

Not noticed that before. So the FIFA 08 demo was an early build and they say the Euro 08 demo was an early build too.

Jesus I cannot wait any longer for the full game.
 
I've noticed the player models look a little better than in FIFA 08. I hope this means in 09 they will make them even better. I'm sick of the hunchback players. I played PES2008 the other day and they have the player models spot on. You just know when Torres, Ronaldo, Henry etc have the ball because of their body shape. FIFA needs to sort that out. Torres looks like Gravesen with hair in Fifa..
 
I've yet to see an official confirmation of 5v5 on-line. Frankly, that's all the made FIFA08 good and if Euro08 doesn't have it, it'll be a tragic step backwards.
 
Just pre-ordered from ShopTo. I clicked 'pre-order' and I got a message saying that it was pre-ordered and I didnt have to go to the checkout.

For you guys who have used ShopTo before, is that all I have to do? Will it turn up in my letterbox next week or do you have to go back to the website and confirm the pre-order once its in stock?
 
Vindaloo said:
Just pre-ordered from ShopTo. I clicked 'pre-order' and I got a message saying that it was pre-ordered and I didnt have to go to the checkout.

For you guys who have used ShopTo before, is that all I have to do? Will it turn up in my letterbox next week or do you have to go back to the website and confirm the pre-order once its in stock?
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When the game gets despatched, they charge your account. You don't have to do anything now mate :)
 
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