Will there ever be space for a 3rd Football Game?

I don't think there will ever be a third one at this point. Licenses unattainable + no one wants to seriously compete with two brands so renowned. I think are alreday enough reasons we are stacked with EA and Konami for eternity.

I regularly delude myself into thinking some indie programmer will develop the football game of my life, but rationally in this context a serious football game would probably be a project too ambitious for a potentially too small crowd.
 
Responsive, and varied gameplay with AI opposition that actually acts like a football team, alongside a comprehensive editor for teams, players, competitions and stadiums. A strong grasp of the domestic game.

Fuck graphics, licenses and online. This shouldn't be too hard to achieve.
 
I’m thinking of the opposite. Maybe Konami and Fifa would unite someday and produce 1 game
 
Madmac79 said:
I don't think there will ever be a third one at this point. Licenses unattainable + no one wants to seriously compete with two brands so renowned. I think are alreday enough reasons we are stacked with EA and Konami for eternity.

I regularly delude myself into thinking some indie programmer will develop the football game of my life, but rationally in this context a serious football game would probably be a project too ambitious for a potentially too small crowd.
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Regarding licensing, Would you not buy the best game with perfect realism/ game mechanics even with 0 licenses, i mean modders do it for pes already so
 
tosser said:
Responsive, and varied gameplay with AI opposition that actually acts like a football team, alongside a comprehensive editor for teams, players, competitions and stadiums. A strong grasp of the domestic game.

Fuck graphics, licenses and online. This shouldn't be too hard to achieve.
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Agreed if it was just a pure football simulation i wouldnt care about any licenses etc.
 
Lexypoooo said:
It's hard to explain why there's not already. Seems to be a good time for a solid third company to get involved and become the cooler, gameplay-focused underdog that PES used to be.
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Agreed, but i think its quite hard to start a football game from scratch in 2020
 
Scottc17 said:
Regarding licensing, Would you not buy the best game with perfect realism/ game mechanics even with 0 licenses, i mean modders do it for pes already so
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Me? Of course I would. Without a shadow of doubt. Just give me realism, mechanics and a generally fullfilling game and I'd be ready to spend the money of both Pes and Fifa combined for it.

But that's not about me. I'd love to be proved wrong but I think the most of potential buyers would be completely thrown off by no licenses.
 
Well since madden took the licenses basically few never head football games came out. I can imagine the same with soccer. Dont know why someone just doesnt create a basic game with modding capabilities. like pes lets import kits but there has to be a company out there that can improve gameplay. Heck, id even take an improved ignite engine or whatever was pre fox engine and see where that is in 2020
 
Madmac79 said:
Me? Of course I would. Without a shadow of doubt. Just give me realism, mechanics and a generally fullfilling game and I'd be ready to spend the money of both Pes and Fifa combined for it.
Totally agree, but unfortunately seems like a distant dream :(
But that's not about me. I'd love to be proved wrong but I think the most of potential buyers would be completely thrown off by no licenses.
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completely agree, to make up for lack of licenses, they could just try to make the scoreboards etc look as similar as possible
 
Let's see what this coronacrisis does with football. Perhaps a third game with licenses is closer than one thinks.
Football may well never be the same as 6 months ago when all this is over.
I think we can already forget the super league and perhaps even the more exclusive CL.
 
If there's 1 big company, it's 2K. But i highly doubt they enter the game. If 2K enter football simulation this could change the game between konami & ea forever.
 
Given how popular football is worldwide, it's surprising there are still only 2 viable football games. The market is so huge that there surely must be plenty of market space for developers to create even a wholly unlicensed game that focuses on a quality football experience rather than PES and FIFA and their stagnant approaches and reliance on licences.

I play a lot a racing sims thesedays. You could look at Gran Turismo and Forza as being the racing equivalent of FIFA and PES, both arcadey racers with the mass-market appeal. But there's a large choice of other racing titles, including plenty of other successful arcadey ones from large companies (Codemasters' F1, GRID and DiRT, Nascar Heat, etc), a whole pile of less popular titles that still get by. And importantly, there are also at least 6 current proper sims on PC which will have a much smaller market, but they're still thriving and producing beautiful sims which focus on a realistic driving and racing experience, high quality physics, good AI and netcode. A lot of them have the same tracks and similar cars, but they still sell enough. A lot of them have their own fictitious tracks and fictitious cars based on real cars (to avoid licensing costs and issues) but they still sell and are still a lot of fun. The mod community can often fill the gap in providing additional real cars and tracks. These titles may not be making $millions like GT and Forza, but not every company needs to make $millions in order to survive.

Football is absolutely huge - it's easily the most popular sport on the planet. And gaming is such a huge industry now too. Are developers really too concerned that FIFA and PES have the market sewn up, that nobody will even consider buying a new, 3rd football game because "there isn't a market for a 3rd football game"? Racing games suggest there is a market for a whole range of titles. I don't believe the lack of licences will mean it just won't sell at all - if it's good enough, it'll catch on with enough people and if you allow easy modding, the lack of licences isn't an issue. Save the stupid amounts of money required to obtain licences and focus on delivering a quality product at a much lower cost.
 
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Iit's not just licences, tho. I can see developing an high level football game as a complete pain in the ass compared with a racing game or pretty much almost any other sport genre. You'll have to cover graphics, realistic animations, the AI of 22 players, tactics, add coherent modalities and God knows what else I'm forgetting, at least if you want to put out something good enough. And that's stuff not even Ea and Konami gets right all the time (well, lately not even most of the times).

Couple this with the fact most of kids goes crazy with player faces, big stars and this kind of stuff (we see it every day).. and it's easy to see why it's so hard for other SH to consider it. I don't think they don't like the possible money from it- I just think they consider the effort to develop something similar not worth it in return.

Or else, somebody needs to explain me why literally nobody came out with a serious football game in.. what? I can't even remember the last one, probably happened in Ps2 era or something.

I'm 100% sure that if licences situation would change as Stan said above (more easily available by anyone else), chances of a third game coming out would go super high.
 
I was asked this by @Chris Davies back when we did the amazing Evo Web podcast's and my opinion was this.

Because there are already 2 major football games that already dominate the market in terms of equity and brand awareness and are already covered in the (very arguably) simulation aspect, Trying to make a new football game that competes with those in their areas would be brand suicide. It's like opening another burger joint on the same street as McDonalds and Burger King.

Your product may even be better, More authentic and hand crafted with genuine love and passion compared to the passive machines of the aforementioned 2 chains; But to the masses, It's still a burger joint and people will generally stick with what they're familiar with and what is established because they're creatures of habit & comfort.

If you WAS to make a 3rd football game, Then it would have to be different and have a different philosophy. We already have two (like i said, Arguable, But they would still be officially classed as realistic) football games so you would have to consider and alternative - An arcade football game. Something a lot more fun and accessible. It would be less demanding from development and resource standpoint and there would be an audience that doesn't necessarily want a deep football game or to be overwhelmed by a steep learning curve that just wants to pick something up for casual fun.

Think about people (myself included) that don't really enjoy or follow basketball but enjoys NBA Jam or Playgrounds over 2K20 or cares for cars and Motorsports but could play Crash Team Racing or Horizon Chase Turbo over Gran Turismo or Project Cars.

And there ARE football games that exist in this given example. More than you think actually.

We've heard of Mario Strikers as well as cult hit - Captain Tsubasa.

There's also some lesser known titles out by smaller developers such as:

Legendary Eleven


Pixel Cup Soccer


And Sociable Soccer


Then there are of course the many Sensible Soccer tributes that appear over time too. The point being there's room for more football games but as the technology becomes more advanced as well as the cut-throat monopoly & on licenses and it's legal minefield becoming more and more ridiculous by the year, Developers don't see the appeal of entering the football gaming business unless it was to fill a gap in the casual market like these smaller developers have tempted to, Which is very commendable to say the least.

As mad @Madmac79 said, Coding a game with 22 players on the pitch cohesively for a start is not the easiest or most appealing task to assign yourself.
 
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normazimuth said:
Given how popular football is worldwide, it's surprising there are still only 2 viable football games. The market is so huge that there surely must be plenty of market space for developers to create even a wholly unlicensed game that focuses on a quality football experience rather than PES and FIFA and their stagnant approaches and reliance on licences.

I play a lot a racing sims thesedays. You could look at Gran Turismo and Forza as being the racing equivalent of FIFA and PES, both arcadey racers with the mass-market appeal. But there's a large choice of other racing titles, including plenty of other successful arcadey ones from large companies (Codemasters' F1, GRID and DiRT, Nascar Heat, etc), a whole pile of less popular titles that still get by. And importantly, there are also at least 6 current proper sims on PC which will have a much smaller market, but they're still thriving and producing beautiful sims which focus on a realistic driving and racing experience, high quality physics, good AI and netcode. A lot of them have the same tracks and similar cars, but they still sell enough. A lot of them have their own fictitious tracks and fictitious cars based on real cars (to avoid licensing costs and issues) but they still sell and are still a lot of fun. The mod community can often fill the gap in providing additional real cars and tracks. These titles may not be making $millions like GT and Forza, but not every company needs to make $millions in order to survive.

Football is absolutely huge - it's easily the most popular sport on the planet. And gaming is such a huge industry now too. Are developers really too concerned that FIFA and PES have the market sewn up, that nobody will even consider buying a new, 3rd football game because "there isn't a market for a 3rd football game"? Racing games suggest there is a market for a whole range of titles. I don't believe the lack of licences will mean it just won't sell at all - if it's good enough, it'll catch on with enough people and if you allow easy modding, the lack of licences isn't an issue. Save the stupid amounts of money required to obtain licences and focus on delivering a quality product at a much lower cost.
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I think there are different demographics in both genres.

I will tell you a personal example: I have 5 friends, similar age to me 33. They all love and breath for football, 1 of them watches motor sports occasionally. They are all casual gamers, veeeery casual.
For some reason 4/5 of them have played a racing game, or would play in the future. But when it comes to football games only 2/5 of them used to play once every month , at best, some 1vs1 or friendly company tournament some nights of our early adulthood, but they never got deeper into it.
Now if you ask them why do they play racing games, they will tell you about driving simulation. If you ask them why they don’t play footy games, they will tell you that they are games intended to be played by children. That it is s kids game.
Not sure if is general phainomenon, but that’s why I think there is not so big players base for footys. Despite FIFA broke the ”taboo” in numbers and went from 4~6 million sales to tens of millions , and PES fall and came back again to around 3~5million sales. According to charts sites. I mean although there are many football fans there is not the respective football players.
 
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I'm always amazed that there is no European or South American developer that has not attempted to make a football game. I find it incredible that the two big football game makers are based in Canada (I presume it is still EA Canada studio that makes FIFA?) and Japan. Given the passion for football in Europe and South America there has to be someone.

If only CD Projekt Red made football games :))

I think there is definitely space for a third game. There are so many that are disillusioned with the modern iterations of PES and FIFA (I count myself in that list) and I'm sure that although I don't buy them, there are many who still do just for a 'fix' of an up to date version. All of these people would at the very least try the new game.

At the end of the day if it's better than the other two it will sell. Sure it may take a version or two to get a foothold but if the gameplay is better, ultimately it will be played.
 
Don't agree with maffia Murder Bag. In fact until PS3 PES was neither Mc Donalds notr Burger King.
It started as a rather local gourmet version of a hamburger franchise and got very well known because of mouth-to-mouth praise and because it got excellent reviews in the Guide Michelin and other culinary guides.

It became big not because it had licenses (in those days, it had scarcely any) or because it had tons of team (it had 16 club teams), but because it was very, very good in what it did, trying to be a football simulation.

IMO PES was never the number 1 priority for Konami and i would thinnk that with most other gaming companies, PES would have been a better product than it is now.

PES in the PS1 and 2 era is the best example that it is still possible to have an alternative for PES or FIFA I'm pretty sure of that.

But perhaps now isn't the right time and with now, i mean the post 9/11 era.

PES started in the '90's. I'm 58 years old and too young to have lived the 60's consciously, but in my liftetime, the '90's where by fat the most optimistic period. The West had just 'won' the Cold War (that is what they believed, i never believed that) and at that time everything seemed possible.

It lasted until 9/11 and since then people and countries are very pessimistic.

It is very well possible that there will be no publisher who has the audacity to take the gamble of a third footbal lgame. That game will be a very slow starter and that could make it impossible.

But there is a niche for a third game that focusses on gameplay and not on licenses.
 
Stan said:
Don't agree with maffia Murder Bag. In fact until PS3 PES was neither Mc Donalds notr Burger King.
It started as a rather local gourmet version of a hamburger franchise and got very well known because of mouth-to-mouth praise and because it got excellent reviews in the Guide Michelin and other culinary guides.

It became big not because it had licenses (in those days, it had scarcely any) or because it had tons of team (it had 16 club teams), but because it was very, very good in what it did, trying to be a football simulation.

IMO PES was never the number 1 priority for Konami and i would thinnk that with most other gaming companies, PES would have been a better product than it is now.

PES in the PS1 and 2 era is the best example that it is still possible to have an alternative for PES or FIFA I'm pretty sure of that.

But perhaps now isn't the right time and with now, i mean the post 9/11 era.

PES started in the '90's. I'm 58 years old and too young to have lived the 60's consciously, but in my liftetime, the '90's where by fat the most optimistic period. The West had just 'won' the Cold War (that is what they believed, i never believed that) and at that time everything seemed possible.

It lasted until 9/11 and since then people and countries are very pessimistic.

It is very well possible that there will be no publisher who has the audacity to take the gamble of a third footbal lgame. That game will be a very slow starter and that could make it impossible.

But there is a niche for a third game that focusses on gameplay and not on licenses.
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I get what youre saying that there is still a space but to make a game from scratch with 1000s of different animations is very difficult which fifa and pes already have, a big base of animations in which theyve built upon for years, if a dev wanted to start from scratch today, it would prob take 3-5 years imo, i dont know what other big companies may tap into this, i was thinking Rockstar Games, 2k but v unlikely
 
slamsoze said:
I will tell you a personal example: I have 5 friends, similar age to me 33. They all love and breath for football, 1 of them watches motor sports occasionally. They are all casual gamers, veeeery casual.
For some reason 4/5 of them have played a racing game, or would play in the future. But when it comes to football games only 2/5 of them used to play once every month , at best, some 1vs1 or friendly company tournament some nights of our early adulthood, but they never got deeper into it.
Now if you ask them why do they play racing games, they will tell you about driving simulation. If you ask them why they don’t play footy games, they will tell you that they are games intended to be played by children. That it is s kids game.
Not sure if is general phainomenon, but that’s why I think there is not so big players base for footys. Despite FIFA broke the ”taboo” in numbers and went from 4~6 million sales to tens of millions , and PES fall and came back again to around 3~5million sales. According to charts sites. I mean although there are many football fans there is not the respective football players.
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But as you've said, FIFA sells tens of millions, and PES sells many millions too....and that's every year. The PC racing sims I'm talking about (Automobilista, rFactor2, RaceRoom, etc) sell (as far as I can tell) only hundreds of thousands, and that's in total - ie. they're not pulling in those numbers every year the way FIFA and PES are.

I don't how much EA & Konami spend on licensing per year (I'm assuming it $millions), so that's a huge amount of money that a 3rd game could avoid spending and focus all investment on development.

I get that football games are complex to develop but it's odd that, for a game as popular as football is, literally no-one else seems to be trying. I don't believe EA and Konami have got it sewn up because the actual footballing aspect of their games has hardly advanced much in the past 15 years. I suspect the market is there and big enough for a pure football sim, even without the licences, to justify someone giving it a go.
 
I don't quite see the 9/11 connection, but also disagree with the burger chain analogy, plenty of gourmet places around these days! (Well, before the world ending pandemic, anyway).

I would love nothing more than a game with zero licenses, and was more like a blank canvas so we can create our own teams, leagues etc with our own promotion/relegation rules. I think Football Managers advanced editor is the closest we'll ever get.

I think the problem is how expensive a decent football game would be to develop, even with no licenses. You'd need significant motion control to get realistic player movement, good looking graphics (maybe not a priority for most who would play this but still) etc. And the more realistic/deep you want a game to be, the more complex it gets. A lot of effort for probably very little reward, sadly.

I think the closest we'll get is another game with a different take on football, like Pure Football 10 or so years ago.
 
Talking about different takes and compromises, if I had a SH and I wanted to realistically develop a football game, maybe one for both online and offline users, I'd go for a 5 by side game. I'm surprised nobody ever gave a serious shot to this, to be honest. With less players and a smaller field it would be way easier to develop the gameplay while still mantaining some depth and it would be plenty of other possibilities and customizations (since 5 by side football is more known on the amateur side, nobody would also care for licences, you could make up any kind of championship or mode, a bit like Volta, except, you know, possibly not as sucky as that).
 
Slightly unrelated: A rumor surfaced today that Microsoft are to purchase all of Konami's gaming Catalogue.

If that's indeed true, then we may not get a 3rd football game, but a different PES in the following years.
That'd be a good question for another thread. Would you like Microsoft to pick up PES' development and take it in a new direction?.
 
Chuny said:
Slightly unrelated: A rumor surfaced today that Microsoft are to purchase all of Konami's gaming Catalogue.

If that's indeed true, then we may not get a 3rd football game, but a different PES in the following years.
That'd be a good question for another thread. Would you like Microsoft to pick up PES' development and take it in a new direction?.
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Funnily enough, something that I had been thinking for a while was how good it would be if the PES code was made available as open source (or at least at a reasonable cost) so we could have multiple developers use that as a starting point to save the years of development it could take them if starting from scratch to get anywhere half decent. Then we could have multiple flavours of PES evolve and surely that would include at least one developer focussing on pure sim gameplay and deliver something far better than Konami ever will.

Personally, I think PES2018 would be a great starting point and having someone take that, get rid of some of the rubbish in that game (eg. the stupid ping-pongy backheels) and take it forward from there....heaven. I also think PES2020 would be a good starting point - it has a good feel but Konami seem hell-bent on making it as horrible to play as possible.
 
Just reading an article about the Microsoft purchase of Konami products...

"...Microsoft will be purchasing massively popular Konami properties such as Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill, and Castlevania. .....Microsoft will finalize a deal with Konami to buy up all of its existing properties. The text emphasizes the deal's steep price and details that Microsoft will be providing Konami with the funds to build a manufacturing facility that will be aimed at R&D for gambling devices. "

Interesting to read where Konami' sees its future.
 
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