Football Manager for iPhone tomorrow

By Robert Purchese Published 12 April, 2010

Sports Interactive wants £7 for it.

Sports Interactive has announced tomorrow's release of Football Manager Handheld on iPhone.

The game will cost £6.99, but SEGA and SI promise that FMH will be "the biggest football management game to hit the iTunes store".

Plus, plenty of effort has been made to tailor the experience for iPhone and iPod Touch, right down to listening to your music collection while managing your team.

There are 34 football leagues to pick from spanning 11 countries, and squads of up to 36 players can be controlled. You'll need to set tactics, formations, team and individual player instructions, training and transfers.

Expect a Eurogamer review soon.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (52) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • mrpon #1 2 years ago

    /two fingers

  • stuarty_2003 #2 2 years ago

    Football management games just don't work on mobile platforms.

    They never have.

    Edit:

    Imagine this was Activision...

    Acti: "Make it mobile, bitches."
    SI: "But it'll be cack, and we'd rather work on FM2011."
    Acti: "You're fired and we're suing you after we interrogate you in a windowless room."
    Edited by 1 at 12/04/10 @ 12:04

  • Jonny5Alive7 #3 2 years ago

    /crosses fingers

    If its good then you will easily get your money's worth.

  • normannormal #4 2 years ago

    But Stuarty-2003, the iPhone isn't the same as other mobile handsets is it? It's not the same taking Football Manager Handheld (which is the PSP game) over to the iPhone as taking Football Manager onto some Nokia from 5 years ago...

  • stuarty_2003 #5 2 years ago

    @normannormal - I'm not saying that.

    You get quite a raft of depth in the desktop incarnation of the game, that the mobile versions seem...shallow. Not necessarily in a bad way, but certainly in comparison to the desktop versions.

    We'll see though, won't we!?
    Edited by 1 at 12/04/10 @ 12:13

  • Melchett #6 2 years ago

    I thought the PSP versions worked really well. In fact I've found them more addictive than the PC versions as I don't have to be at my PC to cram in a couple of matches.

    This could be excellent/incredibly dangerous

  • MikkyX #7 2 years ago

    iPad version next then?

    EDIT TO ASK: Any screenshots floating around?
    Edited by 1 at 12/04/10 @ 12:23

  • frugtkompot #8 2 years ago

    I think that's an interesting platform to engage in. Practically, it could work really well - especially on the iPad.

  • varsas #9 2 years ago

    @stuarty_2003: I think a lot of us enjoyed CM2, 3 and 4 without the level of depth that FM has now so I don't see why this would not be enjoyable.

  • Mkwone #10 2 years ago

    I hope this is rubbish so it doesn't take over my life. :D

  • frycrayola #11 2 years ago

    I find the level of depth in FM Handheld to be rather insufficient. There's not enough meat there and having only one full league (and a handful of top flights) active limits the scope for a nice widespread career.

    Still, there's far more than £7 worth of game to it. Assuming it's a straight port of the PSP game, that's damned good value.

  • superdelphinus #12 2 years ago

    jesus christ this is potentially the most damaging news ever

  • Seabeast #13 2 years ago

    I used to love SI but the last 3 games they have done were full of bugs which pretty much never got fixed. FM08 and FM09 were both very poor, especially 08. I played the demo for FM10 and thought that they finally produced a game of real quality again. When they released the full game I was really enjoying it, the only real issue being the regen players being quite poor and not enough of them to go around to keep the game competetive after 10+ seasons, and the fact that was it was too easy to score from headers. So they released patch 10.2 with a fix for crossing to prevent people from scoring too many headers, which then meant it was near impossible to score from a cross as the winger would wait 3 seconds before trying to cross to allow the defender to knock it out for a corner........resulting in tons of corners and centre backs scoring 15 a season because of it. So they released 10.3 patch about THREE MONTHS later with crossing fixed, but now heading doesnt work, so you win headers, but you can only score about 1 in 50 (if you're lucky)

    Basically I'm fed up with them releasing these games yearly with huge bugs, or issues with the match engine that ruin the experience, sure they patch the game, but it takes months for each patch, with them releasing a 'final patch' every season which is basically the result of everyone beta testing the game for 5-6 months before they can get it right, but even then they still can't get it right. What kind of games company releases a ' final patch ' when theres still issues with the match engine, and the developers even said that they still had some problems with patch 10.3 before they released it. Why released a patch that still has problems?

    I have played SI games since 1995 but im 100% done supporting this developer if they continue to milk the franchise every single year rather than keeping the game in development long enough to release it when it actually works properly, without paying customers having to beta test it for 6 months only to get a final patch that still didn't fix the freakin' game.

    And people moan about Infinity Ward.

    Rant over.
    Edited by 1 at 12/04/10 @ 13:00

  • Rascanuvols #14 2 years ago

    It says £7, but I think it will cost most people theirs souls.

    Goodbye life.

  • superdelphinus #15 2 years ago

    i wonder if it is going to be literally twice as good as champ manager 2010? does anyone have that>?

  • superdelphinus #16 2 years ago

    what are souls

  • Masaroth #17 2 years ago

    Glad to see a review happening for this as it has the potential to be the perfect time killer, squeezing in a few matches here and there when you have the time, or it could be absolutely rubbish. Heres hoping for the former.

  • el_pollo_diablo #18 2 years ago

    The only thing more tedious than football is football management.

    Get negging! :D

    edit: I'm proud of you all.
    Edited by 1 at 12/04/10 @ 17:04

  • coastal #19 2 years ago

    Finally SI find a platform where pirates can't abuse their releases.

  • Jimster71 #20 2 years ago

    I've recently started playing FM10 on PC. Will be interested to see how the iphone version fares.

  • Craig0702 #21 2 years ago

    @coastal

    Hopefully there's a "WHOOOOOOSH" intended on that...

  • Les #22 2 years ago

    I stopped playing Football Manager (or Championship Manager as it was called back then) 10 years ago. Loved it to bits but they kept adding features making the play experience more and more time consuming. If the iPhone version is more like the Amiga version of around 15 years ago (man, I'm getting old) it's a good thing IMHO.

  • riz23 #23 2 years ago

    This wont be £7 for long. Not if they want to sell any that is.

  • wowami #24 2 years ago

    if its got the complexity of CM2 / 3 then i'm there - the more recent in-depth ones i really dont have the time for.

  • Waffleaber #25 2 years ago

    Basicly a wholesale port of CM4 with updated names would be ideal. Don't try and squeze the 3D engine in, top down 2D will be fine.

  • superdelphinus #26 2 years ago

    there are reviews out already

  • Joco84 #27 2 years ago

    I've put the girlfriend on standby, this could be the final nail in the relationship coffin!

  • darleysam #28 2 years ago

    On Android, pleeeeeeeeeease?

  • Subquest #29 2 years ago

    sorry but £6.99 is out of step with most iphone games, thousands and thousands of sales will be lost. i'm not saying it's not worth £7 - but that they will get virtually zero impulse buys as you could buy a handful of other, quality games for the same money. Mistake I think.

  • Ryze #30 2 years ago

    Advice: release some kind of timed unlockable demo to hook everyone in.

  • ShanksForTheMemories #31 2 years ago

    9/10 from IGN UK so could be worth a look.

    [link url=http://uk.wireless.ign.com/articles/108/1083043p1.html
    ]http://uk .wireless.ign.com/articles/108/...[/link]

    To be honest I probably got more enjoyment out of the good old champ man games such as CM 2 Italia and CM 97/98 when it wasn't all about custom tactics, press conferences and statistical overkill.

  • samk #32 2 years ago

    @ Les and wowami - amen to that.

    I used to love the old PC Champ Manager games. Get some beers in with mates and play through an entire season in one lazy summer afternoon.

    Unfortunately we lost interest with PC FM2008 and haven't bothered buying any since. It'd become complicated to the point we couldn't even get the pre-season friendlies out of the way in an afternoon.

    Haven't tried any of the simplified PSP versions so might give the iPhone one a go tomorrow.

  • andijames #33 2 years ago

    Cue half an hour toilet breaks now and sudden random shouts of GOAL from said cubicle at work!

  • varsas #34 2 years ago

    @Subquest: Wasn't GTA up at that price? Didn't that sell well?

  • superdelphinus #35 2 years ago

    it's one app where i'm not really arsed about the price. I know it will work out at about 0.00001p per hour of entertainment!

  • sir_tripod #36 2 years ago

    All those people thinking they'll lose their lives to this game shouldn't worry; the iPhone's piss-poor battery life will come to your rescue and stop you from playing for more than 20-30 minutes at a time.

    Yes, I have one so I know from first-hand experience... And yes, I probably will end up buying FM for it. :(

  • Freelancepolice #37 2 years ago

    For those bemoaning fm2010 for being too complicated, cm01/02 was released for free and has a bang up to date patch with all transfers up to Jan 2010 [link url=http://www.champman010 2.co.uk/
    ]http://www.champman010 2.co.uk/
    [/link]


    On topic, £7 seems like a steal for me. Meant to run smoothly as well.

  • CalmBlueOcean #38 2 years ago

    Sorry Subquest but you are talking utter nonsense... and I'm going to keep calling people out who whinge about pricing until everyone knows the arguments off by heart.

    If you HALVE the price of your game, the sales need to MORE THAN DOUBLE as a result for it to be anything other than a huge mistake....does a £4.50 price tag for Iphone FootMan double the sales? I'd be astonished if it did.

  • Salaminizer #39 2 years ago

    Tempting.

  • smelly #40 2 years ago

    I-phone pricing is weird. The first thing i thought when i saw this was "SEVEN QUID - HOW MUCH??!?"... But in reality it's not THAT expensive at all, just that everything else is too cheap.

    .. But for some reason, i cant get my head around paying that much for it, even though that's relatively cheap compared to console or handheld release prices.

  • Ashcroft #41 2 years ago

    Manager games take too long to play for a mobile game. I got CM10 for iPhone when it was 59p a couple of months ago, and I'm still not finished the first season. And pricing your game higher than both Street Fighter 4 and GTA is a bit silly on any platform.

  • Bumbuliuz #42 2 years ago

    I´ll pick that one up. At the cost of my soul once again :)

  • Ryboy #43 2 years ago

    Sports Interactive wants £7 for it?

    Well they fuck off then can't they!

  • Subquest #44 2 years ago

    @varsas - you're actually comparing a football management series that's been steadily losing popularity with GTA? The same rules don't apply. Few games can take the risk of standing out of the crowd price-wise. FM is not is that category.
    @CalmBlueOcean - so why do the vast majority of iphone games under a fiver? Not just the indie stuff, but the big stuff too? You seem to know everything about everything - why are so many companies ignoring your advice? Is it because you're astonishingly shit at maths?

  • varsas #45 2 years ago

    @sir_tripod: I assume you must be trickle charge your iPhone, have WiFi and 3G on all the time? My iPhone's battery life is fine.

    @Subquest: I've not read reports that the series is losing popularity? It might well have dropped off a bit especially since there is or was a rival series in CM. I'm pretty sure that FM still does well in sales compared to GTA especially against the cross platform GTA:CW; additionally SFIV is priced at £5.99. Are there any "proper" games on iPhone not priced over £5?
    Edited by 1 at 13/04/10 @ 08:39

  • Les #46 2 years ago

    "@sir_tripod: I assume you must be trickle charge your iPhone, have WiFi and 3G on all the time? My iPhone's battery life is fine."

    I personally don't have much issues with the battery life either. But it all depends on use. In my office there's no 3G so I can use it during the day to make calls and check on news, Twitter, etc. and by the time I get home 10-12 hours later, my battery is still around 90%. But if, at home I play Angry Birds for an hour or two I can get the battery below 20%. It's just that that doesn't happen much. The device is better suited to the 5-10 minute play sessions during (otherwise) idle time.

  • superdelphinus #47 2 years ago

    oooh it's there now!

  • endintears #48 2 years ago

    Had a craving for football management the other day and was thinking about buying FM2010 off Steam. Then I noticed this news story and figured I was better off paying less than a quarter of the price on a streamlined version I can play on the Tube and the shitter.

  • superdelphinus #49 2 years ago

    well it just cost me 6.99 plus the price of a coffee in neros ;)

    off for a 1 hour toilet break now

  • Ant1975 #50 2 years ago

    Its bloody ace! Heres to winning the Hyundai with Robbie Fowler and North Fury!

    ...while on the bog.

  • Subquest #51 2 years ago

    just my opinion, but I'm struggling to like it after a few hours play. clunky screen transitions, poor tactical options, poor in-game management. Still playable but disappointing.

  • superdelphinus #52 2 years ago

    generally i think it's ace. worryingly so.

    only issue is the one already highluighted - confounded by it not being particularly clear how you are supposed to select and drag - are you supposed to hold your finger on a name and drag, drag straight away, drag sideways, drag down? seems a bit random atm