The FIFA and Pro Evolution Soccer (PES) franchises have been going boot to boot since the consoles of the 1990s. 2022 will see a slight tweak to the format though with the PES name being retired by Konami in favor of eFootball.
eFootball isn’t exactly new to hardened PES players – the term was introduced into the game a couple of seasons ago, but there is still bound to be a little confusion among the uninitiated as to what is what.
In this article we are going to break down the key differences between the two games will be this year and taking a look as to whether eFootball will have any more success than PES did at trying to topple FIFA from its dominance on the videogame football stage.
FIFA 22 vs eFootball 2022 Main Differences
Okay so let’s get this out of the way. Many FIFA players would never agree but it has generally been taken as read that Pro Evolution Soccer actually played a better game of football than FIFA, with the latter often accused of being more arcadey. You can’t argue that the presentation of FIFA has been hands down better in recent times though.
This year, with Konami keen to challenge FIFA’s dominance somehow or other they have switched things up dramatically. eFootball will be free to play whereas FIFA 22consists of three different packages ranging from around $50 to $100 depending on how much extra stuff you want to come with it.
So off the bat, eFootball opens itself up to a market that might never have previously strayed from FIFA. Of course, eFootball being free now means Konami will be looking to monetize by dumping microtransactions at every turn, but FIFA is hardly not guilty of that and you have an initial outlay with FIFA 2022. If eFootball can get its gameplay right we could have an interesting few months on our hands here.
FIFA has been rocking the Frostbite engine so beloved by EA for the last couple of years and it continues to look great. eFootball will use Unreal Engine 4, even though Unreal Engine 5 is just around the corner – we assume it will make the switch at some point in the future.
In terms of looks, we still believe FIFA will still have the edge here.
This is where things start to get really annoying for the end-user – ie you and me. FIFA has most of the licenses for teams meaning the Konami eFootball title is forced to use fake player and club names. These have previously been able to be patched out to be corrected but this is an annoying extra step and we are not sure how it will work in eFootball.
Last year Konami persuaded Juventus to jump the FIFA ship which will have annoyed EA no end and it seems they may have tied up another couple of Italian Serie A teams this time around, managing to remove them from FIFA but all this means is that we now have two football games packing varying degrees of fake names. Where is the benefit to the game players here?
Guess what it’s the same issue with players as it is with clubs. And if anything this is even more annoying. FIFA has player likenesses and names tied up for the vast, vast majority of players and while eFootball has managed to secure a couple of big names like Messi and Ronaldo, FIFA wins here. Again we don’t, we just have to put up with this nonsense.
Again FIFA has hoovered up all the licenses to competitions such as the Champions League and even the national divisions, so playing any kind of career mode is just a bit weird in eFootball. It might play a more realistic game of football o the pitch but if the stadia, competitions, teams, and players aren’t correct it is jarring, to say the least.
FIFA’s Ultimate Team (FUT) has been a phenomenal money-spinning success for EA Sports, playing heavily on the card-collecting mechanism sop popular for years. eFootball has its own version, the rather cheesily named MyClub but really when you talk about modes like this FUT and the more recent street football addition to FIFA, Volta Football means you just have a lot more choice with FIFA.
Final Word
It seems at face value that FIFA wins hands down. It kinda doe but eFootball still plays a pretty mean game of football. The problem is FIFA is always going to be more popular because of its addons and licenses. The game almost doesn’t matter. If you really get into eFootball, the chance of finding a couple of friends who are equally into it to play against is pretty slim, although the free model might help offset that little.
