With Pro Evolution Soccer 2016 just a month away, Konami has announced that online support for PES 2014 will be closed down in November.
"Konami Digital Entertainment, Inc. will close its online support for PES 2014 on Nov 17. With PES 2016 set for release on Sept 15 and the online elements of PES 2015 still hugely popular, Konami will be moving its focus to those titles. As such, all online elements of PES 2014 will no longer be supported from this date," the publisher said in a statement. "Konami thanks everyone who has taken part in PES 2014’s many online leagues and competitions. The PES online community is vital to the development process and we are grateful for the constant support shown for the PES series."
It's always a bit infuriating when a game loses multiplayer functionality because servers are going dark, isn't it? I can still find active Quake 2 servers, after all, so why can't I go online with a soccer game that's less than two years old? Practically speaking, it's probably not a big deal, since I doubt the PES 2014 multiplayer community is very large these days, and of course it's still playable solo. But it's the principle of the thing that irks me.
Anyone here still playing PES 2014? How do you feel about the shutdown—are you burned, or are you ready to move on to the new hotness? That being Pro Evolution Soccer 2016, of course, which as Konami said will be out on September 16.
It's worth noting, however, that this year's PES on PC is apparently not going to be a straight port of the PS4/Xbox One game, and nor is it going to be a conversion of the PS3/Xbox 360 build. It will, instead, be it's own thing. And, the suspicion has to be that that thing will sit somewhere betwixt the two console generations in terms of quality. We'll wait and see on that, but there really isn't much good news coming out of Konami for gamers right now. Unless of course you dig mobile and/or are a shareholder, in which case welcome to the money pit.
