Microsoft head butts FIFA, Pro Evo Soccer into exclusivity
Speaking at the Leipzig Games Convention, Microsoft has announced that if you want to play the most graphically impressive footy games without gallivanting outside and running the risk of getting someone's head lodged in your chest, you'll have to do it on the Xbox 360. In what is sure to be a valuable coup, both FIFA 2007 and Pro Evolution Soccer 6 are bound exclusively to the Xbox 360 for a period of 12 months.
The latter game is hugely popular in Europe and may prove to be quite a head butting killer app for Microsoft's next-generation console. The exclusivity doesn't include current generation consoles, it seems, but a significantly improved 360 version of Pro Evolution Soccer with Xbox Live support would likely prove irresistable to most. As for FIFA, well, it has "ultra realistic player motion and delivers complete responsiveness due to its ability to branch animations and the real-time calculation of real human biomechanics," according to producer Hugues Ricour. "Essentially our software engineers are writing human decision-making code."
Look forward to not making a decision at all regarding the console when you buy a next-gen soccer game in 2007.
