Daily Briefing: Monday 4th October

Konami are sorry for eFootball's disaster of a launch

eFootball is the overhauled, F2P successor to Konami's flagship Pro Evolution Soccer series and things really haven't been going so well. The game released last week to instant criticism from players and quickly became the lowest-rated Steam game of all time thanks to iffy graphics, shoddy gameplay, and some truly dismal character designs. It's not exactly the bold step forward necessary for a franchise trying to reinvent itself, but Konami have promised that a suite of fixes is on the way.

• eFootball is definitely a weird one because, without wanting to sound actively apocalyptic, it seemed like it was going be a disaster back when it was announced. The idea certainly had some promise - a F2P liveservice model actually feels like a pretty good fit for an already annualised sports title - but every new thing Konami told us about the offering made it sound worse. They confirmed a wee while ago that the game would be "basically a demo" at launch and, as we've just seen, not a particularly good one.

PC will be a priority for Capcom moving forward

That's apparently straight from the mouth of Capcom president and COO Haruhiro Shujimoto who, speaking in a new interview with Japanese outlet Nikkei, said Capcom eventually want PC to become their primary platform. The interview, which was held during Tokyo Game Show and translated by Bloomberg's Takashi Mochizuki, also confirmed that Capcom want PC game sales equalling console game sales within two years.

• This doesn't seem to just be lip-service from Capcom either, it looks like they're really committed to this. Monster Hunter: Rise, the juggernaut Nintendo Switch exclusive, is set to hit PCs in January and that's some soldier to lead the charge. Capcom have been having a good time of it lately with hit instalments like Rise and Resident Evil Village, but there's definitely still work to be done to improve their PC offering. Village in particular suffered extensively at launch due to a mixture of Denuvo DRM and general performance issues, so Capcom will need to sure things up if they really want a PC-oriented future.

Xbox console shortages will continue into 2022

That's according to inescapable Xbox boss Phil Spencer who, speaking in a recent interview with The Wrap, suggested that console stock shortages could very well extend into next year. While the ongoing and well-publicised chip and component shortages are very much to blame for the wider hardware shortages across the Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5 and, to a lesser extent now, the Nintendo Switch, Spencer says there are more factors at play.

• Spencer said it's "too isolated to talk about [the console stock shortages] as just a chip problem", instead he attributes the issue to "multiple pinch points" up and down the process chain for acquiring, manufacturing, shipping, and selling. These kinds of issues will take time to settle down but, as for a specific time frame, Spencer says "regretfully [the shortage] is going to be with us for months and months, definitely through the end of this calendar year and into the next calendar year."