IGN writes: "World Soccer Winning Eleven 9 on Xbox was, and still is, one of the greatest football games to ever hit store shelves. It played like football, moved like football, pretty much everything in Winning Eleven 9 looked and felt like the original article. It didn't have the glitz and the glamour of the EA Sports alternative but in the way of purely authentic football fun, there was simply no equal. The series' first effort on next-gen consoles (which, at the time, was only Xbox 360) was solid but couldn't compare to what the gaming public had seen prior. Winning Eleven, like all franchises, had to go through some growing pains before making another run at the cup".
