Konami opens London studio to help make PES "fresh and exciting"

Konami has opened a studio in London to help make PES.

The idea is the dedicated PES Production Studio will work with the main PES team in Tokyo, Japan to help PES better reflect European football culture.

It will "strive to adopt and recreate local football culture that will ensure the long-running series is kept fresh and exciting", Konami said.

"These are hugely exciting times for the PES series," Konami boss Shinji Hirano commented.

"We are looking for a number of creative people who can help us elevate PES to whole new levels. As part of Konami's commitment to ensuring PES captures the majesty of European football, we are looking for people to help capture the very essence of the beautiful game and bring it to life."

PES Production Studio will work on games in the long-running series for high end consoles and PC.

Konami recently reorganised the PES team, with Kei Masuda taking over from series veteran Shingo 'Seabass' Takatsuka', who has moved on to other football-related projects.

Last month PES European team leader Jon Murphy told Eurogamer that getting the Japanese development team to have a deeper connection with fans was "not always easy".

"They're over in Japan and a lot of them don't speak English," Murphy said. "So there's a lot of filtering that has to be done on that process.

"I understand where the fans are coming from, because in past years we have talked about going down a certain direction and I don't think we've gone far enough down that direction. I don't think it's necessarily that we've not done what we've said. It's that we haven't taken it far enough in the past."

He added: "There have been company changes that have been made where, as a Japanese company we see dealing directly with the consumer as key to the development of products.

"There have been all kinds of forces at work."

The next generation PES is being made using Kojima Productions' Fox Engine.