Football-Manager posts

Miles Jacobson, the studio director of the UK-based Football Manager developer Sports Interactive, has been given a huge honor this week by being names as the recepicant of the O.B.E. by the Queen. As PC Gamer reports, O.B.E. stands for Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. Jacobson was given the honor for his work in the games industry.

Founded in 1997, Sports Interactive first gained fame and sales for its soccer management sim Championship Manager. In 2004 it started another rival series, Football Manager, after losing the name rights to the Championship Manager series to Eidos. Sega started publishing the Football Manager series and in 2006 acquired Sports Interactive.

If you are a Steam user you can go ahead and download the demo for Football Manager 2011 from developer Sports Interactive and publisher Sega. This is the so-called "strawberry" demo that contains 12 different leagues to play with (England, Scotland, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Brazil, Argentina and Chile) in this free portion of the sports management sim.

The strawberry demo will be released to non-Steam users on Friday along with the so-called "vanilla" demo that just has two leagues, England and Scotland. Look for the full version of Football Manager 2011 to be released in the US on November 9.

The exciting world (well, exciting for some people) of pro soccer management simulations will get its latest version in just over a month. Publisher Sega just announced that Football Manager 2011 now has a solid release date of November 9 for the PC and Mac for US gamers. (UK gamers get access on November 5) As we mention earlier this month pre-orders for the game will be able to download 20 classic Sega Genesis games for free.

One of the interesting new feature additions for the new version are the links to other web sites. Players can video a match and upload it to YouTube and also post the game's achievements to their Twitter accounts. The game will support Steamworks achievements as well

It looks like Valve is shifting how the PC gaming download site Steam handles sales. The service is now letting a few games get the price cut treament for the entire week instead of just a few days. This week, three PC game titles will get price cuts until September 13.

One of them is Sega's sports sim game Football Manager 2010 which gets a 50 percent price cut to just $9.99. Another discount goes to the family friendly game Secret of the Magic Crystals which also gets a 50 price reduction to a mere $4.99. Finally, Gas Powered Games' 2008 released action RPG game Space Siege has a 66 price cut this week, making the game priced at a mere $5.10.,

While it's not exactly a shock since this game comes out with a new version every year, today Sega officially announced plans to publish Football Manager 2011, the latest game in the sports simulation series for the PC and Mac platforms. The game will be developed once again by Sports Interactive.

Some of the new features in this edition include a revamped training system that will allow virtual team managers to "give their team specific areas to focus on in the lead up to a match." In addition the new game will feature a way to "negotiate contracts with players in real time" with several different type of sports agents to deal with. Hey, maybe Jerry Maguire might show up to "show you the money." The game is due out before Christmas 2010.