Can PES be better on PS3?

Monday 14 May 2007
There's a huge quality gap between the newest Winning Eleven prototype (eventually Pro Evolution Soccer 7) running on PlayStation 3 and the version on Xbox 360, according to a Konami "insider".

The Eastern deep-throat has made the claim on his blog, handily deciphered by forumites, reckoning that the PS3 version is 'three times better' than the 360 counterpart. But how exactly could this be possible? Surely both machines possess almost exactly the same techno-muscle?

Actually, it's not all about the size of your chips - here's how Pro Evolution Soccer 7 could conceivably reach that triple-tastic improvement between the consoles.

1 Konami knows PlayStation3 inside-out
Aside from Sony itself, Konami is one of the best developers to tackle a PS3 title. The PES dev team has been working intimately with Sony for ages, while the MGS4 team has already been elbow-deep in PS3's giga-guts for more than two years now. If anyone can uncover previously unheard of strength from Sony's console, it's Konami.

2 The PS3 pad will always be better
PlayStation 2's pad was, and still is, probably the best joypad ever conceived. And PES employed its wonderfully responsive D-pad perfectly, to the point where D-pad users will find PES on 360 feels very weird. Unless Microsoft unveil a new, better D-pad for its controller, we're always going to prefer playing with the SixAxis, and PS3's version will always 'feel' better. Probably about three times better, in fact.

3 Blu-ray can hold more gumph than DVD
And by 'gumph' we mean things like team data and animations. We can believe that Pro Evolution Soccer on PS3 might include a whole raft of extra teams, perhaps for lesser-known leagues like Argentina, or have a much deeper animation scale - especially since you can always install PS3 games on the hard drive, too. It might just be the extras we're talking about, but that's what PES is all about.

Ben Richardson is a former Staff Writer for Official PlayStation 2 magazine and a former Content Editor of GamesRadar+. In the years since Ben left GR, he has worked as a columnist, communications officer, charity coach, and podcast host – but we still look back to his news stories from time to time, they are a window into a different era of video games.