Whatever happened to Pro Evolution Soccer Mobile?

We're spoiled for football games on mobile, we really are. To name but three classy titles: Real Football 2007 3D, FIFA 07 and LMA Manager 2007 will keep any football fan entertained.

Yet we're still waiting for the big one. Konami's Pro Evolution Soccer. Or as it's known to afficianadoes, the beautiful Beautiful Game. Now up to its sixth installment on console (and that's without counting the numerous ISS games that preceded it), it's still seen as the football nut's football game.

So why isn't there a mobile version? Here's the thing: there was.

Back in October 2005, Konami announced plans to release Pro Evolution Soccer Mobile in March 2006. It was to be a 2D single-player game, featuring AI from the console game Pro Evolution Soccer 5. There were even screenshots accompanying the press release – that's them above.

"Pro Evolution Soccer is one of Konami of Europe's most recognised and successful titles," said president Kunio Neo at the time. "We intend to bring it to mobile users in a form that will do justice to such a well-loved franchise, and see Pro Evolution Soccer Mobile as a key title as we look to extend awareness of Konami's mobile content."

So what happened to it? The game didn't come out in March last year, and there hasn't been a sniff of it since. We talked to a bunch of publishers, many of whom are hardcore Pro Evo fans themselves, and consistently heard rumours that the mobile version had been delayed due to fears it wouldn't match up to its console parent.

"At last year's MEF show, a bloke from Konami said they had developed a full version for mobile, but it couldn't deliver the level of quality demanded by such a huge brand, so it was never released," claims one exec, who was working for a large mobile games publisher at the time.

If true, Konami wouldn't be the first console publisher to enter mobile, and then find it tougher than expected to squeeze a console game into a phone – let alone porting it to work across a huge range of handsets.

In that sense, postponing the release of the game is a sensible choice, rather than release something that didn't live up to the lofty expectations of Pro Evo fans.

Nobody we talked to for this feature suggested Konami had made a bad mobile game. It's just that expectations are so high, even an average Pro Evo conversion wouldn't do.

What's happened to the project since, though? One publishing source tells us Konami set up an internal development team in Paris to rework Pro Evolution Soccer Mobile, while another claims that Konami is working on a number of new mobile games in Europe, and Pro Evo may be one of them.

The final word should go to Konami, who we contacted for this feature. Unfortunately, they had no comment to make, other than the fact that the game is still planned, but no new details are available at the moment.

For those of us who started dribbling the moment we read that first press release in October 2005, the long delay is frustrating. But look at it another way: mobile phones have come a long way since then, in terms of their technical capabilities.

If Konami ultimately decided that mobile just wasn't ready for Pro Evo, it's a decision worth respecting.

Yes, it's given Real Football a chance to steal Pro Evo's traditional position of being the main challenger to FIFA. But if Pro Evolution Soccer Mobile does come out, fingers crossed its quality will prove that the lengthy delay was worthwhile.