When it comes to soccer¹, there’s one brand global video gamers prefer: FIFA. Despite being the product of America’s two-time “Worst Company Ever” winner EA, FIFA is beloved by fans both because it’s fun to play and because it includes tons of licensed teams from all the most popular soccer leagues around the world.

But Konami’s second-place Pro Evolution Soccer (PES, also called Winning Eleven in Japan) may have finally found a gap it can use to challenge FIFA’s dominance, especially in Asia: the Asian leagues. Konami announced on Monday that it has finalized a deal with the Asian Champions’ League that will see Asia’s top club teams coming to the game for the first time ever in PES 2014. And while FIFA does have teams from Korea’s K-League and Australia’s A-League, it doesn’t have any club teams from other Asian countries, so Konami’s game will be the first to offer those teams to players.

Chinese soccer fans, for example, will be able to play as China’s top club teams Guangzhou Hengda, Jiangsu Shuntian, Guizhou Renhe, and Beijing Guoan for the first time ever in a major soccer game. And Konami is reportedly in negotiations to bring the entirety of China’s Super League, Japan’s J League, and Thailand’s Premier League into the game as well.

Although the biggest European clubs have huge followings in Asia, Konami’s inclusion of Asian fans’ hometown clubs could be a way of helping it scoop up some of FIFA’s market share across the region. No team licensing can make up for a bad game, of course, and it remains to be seen whether PES 2014 will be able to compete with FIFA 14 on that front. But if the games are comparable in other ways, the pull of being able to play as the hometown heroes may be enough to bring some Asian fans over to PES.

In China, it already appears some fans are excited about the prospect of playing as Chinese Super League teams. The comments section on this article about the new PES 2014 seems to have descended quickly into banter and cursing, with fans talking about things like whether games played in Beijing Guoan’s home at Worker’s Stadium will feature the sounds of Guoan fans’ legendary foul-mouthed chants. If Konami can capitalize on that interest, it may just have found a way to challenge the dominance of FIFA in the world’s most populous continent.

1. Yes, I called it soccer and not football, because that’s what the game was originally called. Watch this newsreel clip of Liverpool FC from 1935 if you don’t believe me. Football used to refer to any game played on foot, with the most popular games being Association Football (the sport we now know as soccer) and Rugby Football. The name “association football” was later shortened to assoccer and then just soccer in the colloquial language of the time in the UK.

Gaming and entertainment giant Konami has recently set up a base in Singapore and is fanatically looking for talented game developers and artists to join its new team.

I was told by the managing director of Konami Singapore, Michio Takahashi, that the office is set up “to create friendly competition” among Konami’s U.S and China offices. But Takahashi remains tight-lipped on what that exactly means. (Perhaps I should have met him for beers instead of coffee!)

So what could he mean here exactly? Given that the Singapore office is acting like a game production house (as they are hiring devs and artists), team Singapore is likely to develop or localize games from Japan and promote them in the U.S. and China markets.

While Konami is active in Southeast Asia, it seems that its preferred non-smartphone platform for mobile games is TMG’s Kotagames — which some Japanese developers tell us is hot right now. So far Konami has already launched Hisho Collection Mall Empire and Sengoku Collection Samurai Fantasy (in open beta) on Kotagames. The result has been pretty good, says Takahashi. But of course there is always room for improvement and Konami is working closely with the folks at TMG to improve its Kotagames platform.

Anyway, I’m pretty sure most of you guys reading this have played Konami’s games. Think back to Contra on Nintendo Gameboy, Winning Eleven, and Dance Dance Revolution in the video game arcade. Classic!

Contra image credit: Coolrom

Metal Gear Solid cards, Tokyo Game Show 2012

VS Media points out this morning that Metal Gear Solid: Social Ops, which was released just last week by GREE (TYO:3632) and Konami (NYSE:KNM), hit 100,000 downloads in the first two days after its release [1].

As we noted last week, MGS is a high-profile addition to GREE’s portfolio of games. And while I’m told that there are no immediate plans for an English version of Metal Gear Solid: Social Ops for GREE’s global platform just yet, it’s hard to imagine that such a prominent title would not be rolled out internationally if success in Japan were to continue.

Late last week there was news that GREE had cut 25 jobs from its platform business in the US, the first signs of growing pains in what has been a year of rapid growth and expansion into markets outside of Japan. Its aggressive push into the US hasn’t yet produced a runaway hit comparable to rival DeNA’s Rage of Bahamut (developed by Cygames).

It’s recently announced FY2013 Q1 financials were down — largely because of labor costs due to expansion — but the company says that its confident a recovery trend has already started. It will be interesting to see if GREE can finally get things rolling in 2013, and whether or not it can finally land that huge hit game abroad.

GREE booth at Tokyo Game Show 2012

Back at the Tokyo Game Show earlier this year, Metal Gear Solid was prominently displayed at the GREE (TYO:3632) booth, in anticipation of the upcoming release in Japan. That release – together with publisher Konami (NYSE:KNM) – is today, as Metal Gear Solid: Social Ops has finally been released.

For now, the card battle RPG rendition of the popular franchise is only available in Japanese, but it’s a high-profile addition to GREE’s gaming portfolio in its home market.

The 3D graphics look very impressive, and it includes elements that Japanese elements will enjoy, like gacha which allows you to win new cards. I’ve never really gotten deep into this franchise, but nevertheless I find it interesting to see the game presented as a card battle game. I guess it does keep the controls simple, even though the graphics of the battle scenes make the action appear complex.

Japan is pretty crazy about card battle games, with the most famous export thus far being Cygames’s Rage of Bahamut on Mobage. If you’d like to learn more about the genre, Serkan Toto has a great explanation here.

You can check out the promo video for Metal Gear Solid: Social Ops below. And if you’d like to try it out for yourself, it’s available for download over on Apple’s app store, and over on Google Play. Screenshots are below. [h/t VS Media]

Dragon Collection, Tokyo Game Show 2012

Konami (NYSE:KNM) is announcing today that its popular Dragon Collection game is now available in North America for iOS on the GREE (TYO:3632) platform.

Technically speaking, the game has been available in Canada since August as our friend Serkan Toto pointed out when it launched on the Canadian app store. In Canada, the game’s performance has been modest to date, briefly breaching the top ten rankings in the ‘card’ and ‘strategy’ categories. But Konami and GREE have now launched it for the US market as well, and it remains to be seen how it will fare there.

Dragon Collection is one of the biggest and most successful card battle games in Japan, with more than 7 million users in that country alone.

The announcement says that there will be new monsters designed for this English version of the game, but the core gameplay will be the same as the original.

If you’d like to give it a try, you can get it now in the App Store. An Android version is said to be coming later this year.

Social games provider Zynga (NASDAQ:ZNGA), in the wake of announcing its own social gaming space called the Zynga Platform, today announced three big platform partners in Playdemic, Rebellion, and Japanese publisher Konami (NYSE:KNM).

The new partnerships were announced at the Game Developers Conference 2012 in San Francisco. Kazuhiko Uehara, the corporate officer and senior vice president at Konami Digital Entertainment commented:

This new partnership accelerates Konami’s continued success as a top global social games developer and underscores our commitment to provide high quality gaming experiences to the ever-growing social space. We look forward to working hand-in-hand with Zynga to create the best environment possible for playing social games.

For Konami, who claimed about 15 million registered social games users, at the end of 2011, the partnership with Zynga means it will be able to further extend its reach, marketing its games to to Zynga’s 240 million monthly users.

CHART: Konami social games, registered members (millions)

[Chart from Konami, ht to Serkan Toto]