Football Manager Live

And kicking us off in 2009 is the long overdue and highly anticipated Football Manager Live, Sega’s first real foray into MMO gaming and a far more mass market product than the hardcore-friendly traditional FM titles.

“Football Manager Live is a very different game to Football Manager,” explains Sports Interactive’s MD Miles Jacobson. “Imagine a cross between Football Manager, fantasy league, a little bit of eBay, and social networking and you’ll just about get an idea of what FM Live is.

“For a start, no one manages Manchester United – you have your own club, and start off by picking your players using a small budget. You also start off with no ‘skills’ as a manager, and have to decide whether you want to be a jack-of-all-trades, or whether you want to be a specialist in a specific area, such as in tactics, or training, or business, or even a star physio. This way each manager is able to build up his or her own character inside the game.”

Crowd pleasing
“There are organised competitions as well, with matches played live with specific deadlines,” he continues. “That way your opponent can play against your AI assistant if you are not online. “You can create your own competitions inside each game world too – a game world has up to 1,000 managers in it – and gamers can play friendlies whenever they want to. So the game is live all the time, and there are always things to do.

“With one season lasting 21 days, plus seven days for pre-season, time moves very fast, and it doesn’t take long to turn your Championship quality team into a Premier League team. Or if things don’t go your way, a League 2 team.

“So whilst the games are both football management titles, they are both unique experiences that will appeal to different gamers.”

Football Manager Live boasts an easy-to-use interface and huge database of players, and Jacobson is confident that the game can appeal to a wider audience than the main Football Manager series: “We are targeting every football fan who has a PC and a Mac, but a slightly more mass market audience than with the traditional Football Manager series,” he adds.

“If Football Manager is The Times sports section, FM Live is the Daily Mirror’s sports section, and is the perfect game for the lapsed FM gamer who doesn’t have the time to put into Football Manager Live’s older brother anymore.”

The Football Manager series has always been a big hit for Sega, and last year’s entry was the fastest selling yet – managing third place in one of the busiest release weeks of the year. Football Manager Live is set to continue that success, with Sega and Sports Interactive expecting the title to sell and sell for months and years to come.

“We’re using a new development model for Football Manager Live, which we’re dubbing ‘constant development’,” says Jacobson “This will see new features being added to the game every few months, with a lot of these features being based directly on consumer feedback and what they want to see in the game.”

Retail management
“The initial boxed copy is an exclusive package for retail which includes a four month subscription for £29.99,” informs Jacobson. “There are lots of possibilities for new packages in the long term for retail, and Sega has been talking to retailers from across the spectrum to find out what is working for them, and what could work for them in the future too – which is the beauty for a constantly evolving game such as Football Manager Live.”

With a huge marketing campaign (see ‘Soccer Marketing’), the continued success of the Football Manager series, and the fact that FM Live is one of just a few big January titles, then retailers can expect Sega’s MMO to shoot off shelves come release.