GC: PES, FIFA exclusive to 360

By Tom Bramwell Published 23 August, 2006

For 12 months.

Microsoft brought a touch of the Abramoviches to the next-gen football market today, fashioning a deal to secure FIFA and Pro Evolution Soccer's Xbox 360 exclusivity for the next 12 months.

FIFA '07, announced for 360 today, is based on a complete engine rewrite, and today's Microsoft conference in Leipzig saw producer Hugues Ricour demonstrating the game, which is due out later this year.

But it was only following a trailer for the 360 version of Pro Evolution Soccer 6 - playable on Microsoft's stand - that Microsoft played its trump card. Addressing a football-loving German press pack, dotted with pesky foreigners (like me), executive Chris Lewis declared, "Microsoft owns football," with no small about of zeal as he pointed out that now it doesn't really matter which game you prefer, since there's only one place to play the flagship versions.

Both games will appear exclusively on 360 for the next 12 months, he said, although the deal is next-gen exclusivity rather than the full shebang - after all, everyone knows current-generation console games don't count.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (4) Latest comment 6 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • cartman #1 6 years ago

    So GTA4 gets released the same day on PS3 and X360 and PES is only out for X360 for 12 months.

    Why has Sony f*ck*d it up so badly?

  • tobi #2 6 years ago

    LGC 2006: Konami Calls Foul on Microsoft

    Winning Eleven is not exclusive to Xbox 360.

    At its press conference earlier this week, Microsoft made the announcement that Konami's Pro Evolution Soccer (known as winning Eleven to us) and EA's FIFA Soccer would both see a year's exclusivity on the Xbox 360, making its next-gen console "the platform" for soccer fans. This was seemingly a huge win for Microsoft, considering how popular Soccer is in the European and Asian territories.

    Now, however, we're starting to hear a different story. Speaking with Winning Eleven producer/creator Shingo 'Seabass' Takatsuka earlier today, we learned that Microsoft made claims that were untrue. "The presentation was misleading," he told us. "We never said exclusive for one year on the next-gen platforms. We said this year. We were agreed that it was this year."

    According to Takatsuka, Microsoft's claims have caused some issues for Konami (with Sony, no doubt), and he definitely wants to set the record straight. Winning Eleven is exclusive to the 360 for this year, but it's likely a case of necessesity (the PS3 game, which he confirmed is being worked on, isn't far enough along in development) rather than some major exclusivity deal with Microsoft. The PS3 version could ship as early as next spring, he admitted, though no timeframe has been set yet. The only thing certain is that it will absolutely not release before January 1, 2007.

    Interestingly, although EA has no official comment on the matter yet, sources indicate that FIFA may not have a year's exclusivity window for next-gen platforms either.

  • animal_mother #3 6 years ago

    As if it needed saying, but Microsoft are big fat fibbers.

  • Hughes. #4 6 years ago

    Hmmm, MS = full of crap, no change there. But will the news of the lie travel as fast as the lie did?

    @cartman

    Sony have been pretty poor at holding 3rd party Devs to exclusivity deals, MGS2 and the GTAs all made there way to X-Box, GC had loads of good Resi games while the PS2 had to wait till it's twilight years to get Resi 4. Kojima suggested the only reason MGS3 didn't get onto X-Box was because they were too busy working on Wrinkle Snake: The Grand-Daddy years for PS3. Holding properties like that would have been an ace in the hole that they keep letting slip away.

    Pisses me off, because exclusives are what make a system for me. Unless it's something outstanding I don't have much interest in multi-platform stuff, as I always feel it must have been compromised to get it to work on all systems.
    Edited by 1 at 26/08/06 @ 14:24