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Wednesday 30 August 2006
PlayStation 3 gamers will be able to snap up Pro Evolution Soccer 6 next spring, despite Microsoft's recent announcement that next-gen versions of the footballing series would be exclusive to Xbox 360 for 12 months.
Microsoft's announcement was "misleading," according to series producer Shingo 'Seabass' Takatsuka. "We never said exclusive for one year on next-gen platforms".
Instead, it appears that Xbox 360 will only have the remainder of 2006 to enjoy the exclusive. "We said this year," Seabass informed a US website, "we were agreed that [the exclusive] was this year". Seabass confirmed that a PS3 Pro Evo is in early development and that it wouldn't have been ready until next year anyway, regardless of any exclusive deals.
However, as Microsoft termed its deal "exclusive to Xbox 360 in Europe," it could be that Seabass is referring instead to a PS3 version of Winning Eleven, the Japanese release of PES.
As usual with the Winning Eleven series, this would eventually become Pro Evolution Soccer 7, thus bypassing any exclusive deals. And this would most likely be the first true next-gen evolution of PES, as opposed to PES6 on 360 which, aside from a visual boost, is otherwise identical to current-gen versions of PES.
There's no such confusion with FIFA 07, though - the other footie sim that Microsoft signed up for 12 months' exclusivity. Next-gen FIFA 07 "is exclusive to Xbox 360 for the next 12 months," EA has confirmed, stating that this is "a global agreement". No doubt we'll have more on this exclusivity ball game soon.
