For those who might have missed it, Konami recently revealed that their long-running football series, PES, is getting a name change. Konami revealed that Pro Evolution Soccer, will now be known as eFootball PES. The move comes as the publisher wants to place more focus on the esports aspect of the franchise going forward, as explained by European Brand Manager Lennart Bobzien.
“The full product name moving forward will be “eFootball: PES. For this year we’ve announced eFootball PES 2020. We want to put a bigger focus on esports moving forward. In the past we’ve already shown [this] by having competitions such as PES League and eFootball Pro, the professional club competition. Moving forward, there will be bigger esports competitions coming up. We simply thought that by including it in the product naming, we’re making a statement and showing our community of fans, but also the wider audience, that esports will play a very big part moving forward.”
It isn’t always easy to rebrand a franchise that has been around for as long as the PES franchise has. It’s an interesting move and one that no doubt took a lot of thought. Hopefully, this is also an indication that this year’s entry will bring some more meaningful changes to the series, especially since many feel that FIFA, the other popular football game franchise, has been stagnating a bit recently.
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eFootball PES 2020 will be releasing on the 10th of September 2019 for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.
