Presentation
Pro Evo has always suffered from pretty poor presentation. Unattractive menu screens and ropey music don’t hold a candle to FIFA’s slick menus and front end. In online terms, FIFA slams a 35-yard free kick into the back of the net with aplomb by including updated football news reports from Talksport as well as allowing the player to read the latest news from ESPN about any team included in the game. It’s a hugely useful resource for football addicts who no longer need to stop playing and watch Sky Sports News.
FIFA 1-0 Pro Evo

Lag
EA has the benefit of using its own servers for FIFA and as such, there would be no excuse for not optimising the gameplay on Xbox Live. Fortunately, they have done exactly that and playing online feels pretty much the same as playing someone sat next to you on the same console. The commentary lags behind the action a bit, but it does so even in offline mode (though not quite as noticeably).

In contrast, PES is a lag-ridden farce. Exactly what the QA procedures are at Konami remain a mystery but after PES 5, there is no excuse for repeating the same mistakes. The lag is horrific. Frequently players must gamble – has the button they just pressed been ignored, or is the instruction ‘in transit’ to your player? Do you press it again and risk the recipient of the original pass booting it into touch, or leave it and run the risk of the opportunity going begging. No matter what you do, it will go wrong anyway. At corners and free kicks, the game shudders as if the players are standing on one of those machines they used to make people stand on while icing cakes on The Generation Game. This renders free kicks impossible as you can’t gauge where you are up to on the power bar.

Criminally, the lag is so bad that the game slows down when a friend comes online even if you are playing against the computer! We’ve never experienced lag when playing offline before, but PES 6 manages it. Yup, the action of telling you that ‘Russfierce is online’ is enough to give the game the jitters. Utterly appalling, Konami.
FIFA 2-0 Pro Evo
(PES 6 own goal)

Matchmaking
PES 6 makes it virtually impossible to play against a friend in a ranked match without going into private chat, one of you setting up a game room, and the other constantly checking the list while it is set up and getting in there first. Diabolical. It is also not the best match maker in the world. PES 5 players will remember ‘Your challenge was not accepted’ being the bane of their lives – now it is ‘This match room no longer exists’. We only want to play online, Konami, it isn’t rocket science!

FIFA fares little better, but picks up brownie points for making it easier to find people willing to play you. In FIFA, you have to go back out to the front end in order to play someone again, but at least you can choose who you play against. PES 6 makes it very hard to achieve the main reason many people bought the game – thrashing your mates online.
FIFA 3-0 Pro Evo

Gameplay
It is here that Pro Evo closes the gap, but it is little more than a late consolation goal. The fact is that PES 6 is a better game than FIFA (although the gap continues to close between the two) and as such, you are more likely to forgive it its failings and persevere. When PES 6 works online it is a sweet moment, but sadly these moments of perfection are few and far between and generally serve only to reinforce what a missed opportunity the online version is. With luck, patches will address the problems facing the game, because us fans deserve better. Here’s hoping that’s what we get.
FIFA 3-1 Pro Evo