The battle for football gaming supremacy reaches fever pitch later this week, when the next installment of Pro-Evolution Soccer is released. PES2010 arrives in shops on Friday just weeks after its main rival, FIFA10, and has the usual bunch of updates and tweaks to the formula to ensure that it remains at the top of the gaming league.

Earlier this year, Umbro’s England kit was made available for players of PES2009 to download onto their consoles at the same time as it was revealed to the public, and proved to be a massive success around the world with hundreds of thousands of downloads taking place. We’ve done a breakdown of the stats looked into the breakdown of the stats and after the UK, the kit was surprisingly most popular in France, Italy and Spain. Perhaps they wanted to try and beat an England team in the current kit!

PES2010 will feature the iconic Umbro England kit from the start, Umbro footballs and Speciali boots on the feet of players such as John Terry and David James. We were lucky enough here at Umbro to get the chance to play the game ahead of its launch, and we’ve been impressed with what we’ve seen so far. Graphically, the players look incredibly realistic, whilst the introduction of a 360 degree control system has improved things on the pitch, making the game flow much better. The addition of an official UEFA Europa League section alongside the existing UEFA Champions League mode also means you can play for the big prizes with all the official music, balls and kit for an authentic experience – could come in handy if your team gets knocked out early on.

We haven’t really had chance to test the online or management capacities yet, but there’s plenty of talk from Konami, the game’s producers, to suggest that there’ll also be improvements in these areas. All in all, it adds up to a great year for Pro Evo fans.