PES 2022 beta demo: Konami launches surprise "new football game" on consoles
Time to see what PES 2022 is made of!
There was a nice surprise for players of the long-running Pro Evolution Soccer series today, as an unexpected beta test demo for PES 2022 has arrived on consoles.
The developers from Konami have called this demo 'New Football Game Online Performance Test'. Quite why they opted not to call it the PES 2022 demo is a mystery, but they may not have wanted too many people to find out about it - sorry for reporting it if that is the case, Konami!
PES 2022 will be the first PES game released on the Unreal Engine and it makes sense that doing so would require some additional testing and would also lead to some extra glitches that they would not see coming.
But how do you get the PES 2022 beta demo, and what platforms is it on? Here are the details.
What is the PES 2022 beta demo?
Konami's New Football Game Online Performance Test is available to download now on PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S. If you're a PC or mobile or Switch gamer, you'll have to sit this one out.
A really important thing to keep in mind here is that everything you see and experience in the beta demo will not be what you get when the game gets its full release later this year.
Konami has said to Eurogamer that it is a demo designed to test certain features - mainly online matchmaking - and that everything is subject to changes and improvements ahead of the autumn main release.
Eurogamer has also uploaded a video of a match they have played and you can check that out below:
The demo dropped at midnight and will be available to download and play until July 8th, which means we have plenty of time to see what it is like. You can play full matches but you will find a lot of the teams missing for the moment - Manchester United, Bayern Munich, Juventus and Barcelona are the only teams in the demo - and there is no commentary as of right now.
Being a demo, and a really early one at that, don't play if you hate the idea of bugs and crashes as you will likely come across several while you play - the whole point of a demo is to find them and eliminate them from the main release.
Here's a nice touch: you don't need PS Plus or Xbox Live membership to play the PES 2022 demo, even though it does have online features.
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How to get the PES 2022 beta demo?
Because Konami has not officially announced the demo and it is not even called PES, you will have to do some searching as it will not show up on your console dashboard or anywhere else without you searching for almost the exact search term.
So head to your console store and search for 'New Football Game Online Performance Test' and you should see it appear. Now just hit the download button, make a cuppa and wait for it to install.
You can currently get the demo on PS5, PS4, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S. Crossplay between generations is enabled, so get in there ASAP and start playing.
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