Pro Evo Soccer kickin' it on Wii

Few game genres have a broader appeal than sports games, and no sport is more popular worldwide than soccer. Given Nintendo's emphasis on expanding its appeal beyond the traditional gamer market, soccer is a natural choice for Wii games. Electronic Arts has already announced that it will hit the Wii pitch with FIFA Soccer 08 and Mii support this fall, but it will not have the system's soccer market to itself for long.

Konami today announced that its long-running Pro Evolution Soccer series (sometimes known as Winning Eleven) will be arriving on the Wii in the first quarter of next year. Simply called Pro Evolution Soccer for now, the Wii version of the series has "undergone a radical rethink" to be built around the system's motion-sensing controllers. Despite that, Konami is promising the same level of realism seen in previous editions of Pro Evolution Soccer.

Gamers eager for a new installment of the series this year can look for Pro Evolution Soccer 2008, to be released in October for the PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, DS, PlayStation Portable, and PC.