football-manager-2011 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.

There's just a couple of days left before Steam ends its massive annual holiday sale event. Remember that nearly every game is on sale on the download site to some degree and that even more savings can be found with special publisher bundles. From now until 1 pm Sunday you can get the following PC games with even deeper price cuts.

Company of Heroes series - Save 75 percent off all games in series
Football Manager 2011 - $26.79
Zeno Clash - $3.75
Medal of Honor - $29.99
Swarm Arena - $2.50
Divinity II The Dragon Knight Saga - $19.99
Half-Life series - Save 75 percent off all games in series or 85 percent if you own Left 4 Dead 1 or Left 4 Dead 2.
The Settlers 7 - $24.99
AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! - A Reckless Disregard for Gravity - $2.50
Bionic Commando Pack (Bionic Commando/Bionic Commando Rearmed) - $12.49
Mafia 2 - $12.49

Call of Duty Black Ops finds itself on top of Steam's top 10 weekly sales list for a second week in a row. It's not a shocker to see Treyarch's first person shooter at number one again as the game has also been on top of Steam's player stats ever since its release on Tuesday.

In second place this week is Football Manager 2011, the soccer management sim game from Sega. Fallout New Vegas is in third place this week and in the fourth position is Risen, the 2009 RPG that was put on sale this weekend. As we reported, the game was so popular that Steam has temporarily run out of activation keys to the game. The full top 10 sales list is below:

1. Call of Duty Black Ops - Treyarch/Activision
2. Football Manager 2011 - Sega
3. Fallout New Vegas - Obsidian Entertainment/Bethesda Softworks
4. Risen - Piranha Bytes/Deep Silver
5. Divinity 2 The Dragon Knight Saga - Larian Studos/Focus Home Interactive
6. Civilization V - Firaxis Games
7. F1 2010 - Codemasters
8. Left 4 Dead 2 - Valve
9. Day of Defeat Source - Valve
10. Counter-Strike Source - Valve

Call of Duty Black Ops is less than a day to go before its release but the PC port of the military shooter from developer Treyarch finds itself on top of Steam's latest weekly list of its top 10 best selling PC games. If it sells as well as its predecessor Modern Warfare 2 it could stay in the top 10 list for a long time.

The sports management sim Football Manager 2011 from publisher Sega is a surprise second place finisher on the list this week followed by Obsidian's RPG Fallout New Vegas in third place.The full top 10 list is as follows:

1. Call of Duty Black Ops - Treyarch/Activision
2. Football Manager 2011 - Sega
3. Fallout New Vegas - Obsidian Entertainment/Bethesda Softworks
4. Left 4 Dead 2 - Valve
5. Grand Theft Auto Classics - Rockstar Games
6. Civilization V - Firaxis Games
7. Divinity 2 The Dragon Knight Saga - Larian Studos/Focus Home Interactive
8. Medal of Honor - Danger Close/DICE/EA
9. Poker Night at the Inventory - Telltale Games
10. Supreme Commander 2 - Gas Powered Games/ Square Enix

Tomorrow we learn what this new Battlefield game is all about. Personally we just wish that EA would either admit that Battlefield 1943 is canceled or give us a real update on its status beyond some vague statement that it's still in production.

• A new update to the Steam client has been released.
• An update for Worms Reloaded has been released on Steam that adds Steam Cloud support along with some other fixes.
• A small bug update for the Mac version of Trine has been released.
• The full version of Football Manager 2011 is now available on Steam.
• Irrational Games' newest interview podcast has Ken Levine chatting with Epic Games' Cliff Bleszinski.
• Check out some of the weapons to be found in Battlefield Bad Company 2 Vietnam.

This is the playable demo for Football Manager 2011, a sports simulation game where players become agents for pro sports teams. The demo is available for both the PC and Mac and includes the first half of the 2010/2011 season. Games saved in the demo will be compatible with the full game, so aspiring managers can continue where they left off if they purchase Football Manager 2011.

The 'Vanilla' version uses reduced assets and is limited to the English and Scottish leagues to reduce the file size. Alternatively, the 'Strawberry' demo includes quickstarts for the world's biggest leagues, giving players a chance to try out their skills with teams from multiple countries. System requirements are shown after the jump.

Download Football Manager 2011 'Vanilla' PC Demo (333 MB)
Download Football Manager 2011 'Vanilla' Mac Demo (291 MB)

Download Football Manager 2011 'Strawberry' PC Demo (1.11 GB)
Download Football Manager 2011 'Strawberry' Mac Demo (1.08 GB)

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.

As was the case last year, two demos for the upcoming management simulation Football Manager 2011 will be released by developer Sports Interactive and publisher Sega this week. According to Eurogamer the first "strawberry" demo will debut on Steam on Thursday and will feature 12 different leagues (England, Scotland, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Brazil, Argentina and Chile). It will be made available to download for everyone else on Friday.

Friday also sees the release of the second "vanilla" demo, again for everyone, which just has two leagues, England and Scotland. The full version of Football Manager 2011 is still set for release on November 5 in the UK and on November 9 in the US.

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

Sega and Sports Interactive's Football Manager 2011 is one of many soccer/football management sim games you can buy this fall. However the publishing team at Sega is going all out to make getting their game a much bigger value. This week it was announced that pre-orders of Football Manager 2011 on Steam will net the user 20 free games.

Those 20 games will come from the two Sega Genesis Classic collections. The fact that each game included in this offer is sold separately for $2.99 each means that you will be getting free games valued for a total of close to $60 with your $39.99 pre-order of Football Manager 2011. You can see the full list of free games you will be getting after the jump: