Konami plans to expand Winning Eleven franchise as first half profits rise

Japanese publisher Konami has announced that it intends to extend the Winning Eleven brand with a number of new titles, after sales of the most recent game in the series helped to drive operating income up over 45 per cent in the first half of FY 2005.

Operating income for the six months ended September 30th came to 11.9 billion Yen (86.4 million Euro), up 45 per cent over last year, on revenues of 114 billion Yen (831 million Euro), which were up some 12.3 per cent.

World Soccer WInning Eleven 8, which was released during the period, has already sold well over a million units (and its stablemate Pro Evolution Soccer 4 is currently performing exceptionally strongly in Europe), making it into the stand-out title of the first half for the company.

The company now plans to extend the Winning Eleven brand - which has sold over 17 million units since 1995, and has consistently produced a million-selling title every year for the past three years - with the addition of two new games.

J-League Winning Eleven 8 Asia Championship will be launched this month in the Far East, and is a fairly standard extension of the title to cover the J-League and other Asian tournaments; more interesting is European Club Soccer Winning Eleven Tactics, few details of which are available, but which sounds like another entry into the highly competitive football management genre.

It's unlikely that the J-League title will ever see the light of day outside Asia, but Winning Eleven Tactics could certainly make its way to Europe under the well-established Pro Evolution Soccer brand - where, admittedly, it would face hefty competition from titles including Sega's Football Manager and Eidos' Championship Manager.

Konami also touched on the future of the Metal Gear Solid franchise in its conference call to discuss the interim results, revealing that it hopes to sell more units of the forthcoming Metal Gear Solid 3 than it did of its predecessor, and confirming that it intends to develop a Metal Gear Solid 4 - with preliminary work already underway on the title.