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The general manager of Beautiful Game Studios, the developer behind the Championship Manager series, has criticised rival Sports Interactive’s online MMO-style version of Football Manager, FM Live, saying the game is too deep to be worth spending money on.
Speaking to VideoGamer.com last week during a demonstration of Championship Manager 09, due out this April, general manager Roy Meredith said: “I have played Football Manager Live and I don’t really get why I’d spend money on it because it’s too deep for me to want. I like Football Manager, I like playing it by myself. Football Manager Live is just a bit too time consuming for me, and I understand there will be a market for it but not me personally.”
Football Manager Live, available to download now, is the massively multiplayer football management version of Sports Interactive’s hugely successful Football Manager series; one that has in recent years trumped the Champ Man series both in terms of sales and review scores.
Meredith questioned the wisdom of releasing FM Live, suggesting it may “cannibalise” sales of the Football Manager series.
“I’d be worried going down that route, I think there’s a line to be drawn whenever you go down that route of, where’s you main business and what’s going to cannibalise.”
However, Meredith revealed that Beautiful Game Studios “is certainly looking at” the possibility of a rival Championship Manager Live game, but said it would be a “substantially different” experience to Champ Man on PC.
“I want to do it and we have got ideas at the moment that we’re pursuing,” he said. “They are going to be a different experience to what you’d find on Championship Manager on PC. Substantially different. We’re not going to move outside the management of football arena, it is within that space but it’s a different way of looking at the property and the genre if you like. I can’t really say too much about it because it’s quite sensitive timing at the moment, but we certainly are looking at it.”
Fans will know there is already a Championship Manager Online game, developed out of Sweden, however Meredith is “looking at ways we can evolve that”.
Check out our first-look preview of Championship Manager 09 right here.
