Winning Eleven 8 announced for North America

Konami has announced plans to bring its latest soccer game, Winning Eleven 8, to the US. The game will be released for the PC and on multiple consoles next spring.

Winning Eleven 8 will feature licensed leagues this year, adding real player names, likenesses, and uniforms to the game. The game will also contain 57 national teams and 136 club teams to choose from. On the gameplay side, the series will see redesigned penalty kicks and free kicks, a new dribbling system, and an enhanced stats system. For the first time in the series, the referee will be rendered on the field, and he'll run up and down the pitch to follow the action. The game will also have a new training mode that will allow soccer novices to learn the basic rules of the game, in addition to training advanced players on some of the deeper aspects of the sport.

Though a full list of platforms hasn't been announced for Winning Eleven 8, the game is already out in other territories on the PlayStation 2, so it's expected that the game will at least appear on the PC and PS2. Word on an Xbox release hasn't yet been confirmed.