SEGA announces Football Manager 2010

By Robert Purchese Published 12 August, 2009

More accessible, navigable and vibrant.

SEGA has announced Football Manager 2010 for PC and Football Manager Handheld 2010 for PSP, and said both will be out on 30th October (the Friday of the London Eurogamer Expo).

Attention this year has gone on usability, navigation and user interface. The hope is to create a more accessible and "vibrant" experience; one that has shed the side navigation bar in favour of a tab system.

Sports Interactive has introduced a new Tactics Creator and Match Analysis tool too. The former allows an "extensive array" of pre-set and user-created plays to be swapped on the fly by touchline shouts from the coach during games. The latter, on the other hand, allows one to peruse the areas where tackles were made, shots fired from and so on and so forth. And this can be done during or after the game.

On top of all that are a raft of visual and AI improvements to the 3D matches, which should now be a bit more real.

As always, Sports Interactive will discuss these, and other changes on the Football Manager blog over the weeks leading up to launch.

For now, though, there are the first PC and PSP screenshots of Football Manager 2010 to digest.

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 (24) Latest comment 3 years ago

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

  • gagsie #1 3 years ago

    Massive fan of the game but like most most fm fans I'm expecting that the game won't be very playable until a few weeks after release when the first patch is mad available. The 3d match engine looks allot nicer. Maybe not nice enough for some fans to convert from the classic 2d match engine but a noticeable improvement. I'm looking forward to the game but two things cross my mind as they always tend to do around this time of year: Have they implemented many of the excellent suggestions from the users of the fm forums and is this the year I ditch the franchise and pick up a copy of championship manager?

  • THATinkjar #2 3 years ago

    gagsie: You might be right about the bugs, but take a look at this.
    Edited by 3 at 12/08/09 @ 14:33

  • tomkuryakin #3 3 years ago

    I love the FM games but I just don't have the time to play them any more. Sorry SI :(

  • normannormal #4 3 years ago

    I think the whole point this year is that they've spent the year sorting out issues and adding features to address them, rather than spending the year adding a cosmetic feature.
    I'm really excited from what i've seen so far that this is the FM of FMs

  • JimWest #5 3 years ago

    So glad this has been dated, i didn't get last years and went with FML, which turned out to be a waste really. Whilst a good game, the community is just to unpredicatable at times. Many people not being online, or knowing little exploits, or always signing all the good young players. Plus the player contract renewals, they were a terrible way of doing it. Often leading to grossly inflated wages. Wish i had just got the single player version.

    So can't wait for this!

  • DarthInsinuate #6 3 years ago

    The Tactics Creator thingie is really interesting because it's built collaboratively from a 4-5 year project by the hardcore fans on the SI Games forums.

    http://co mmunity.sigames.com/showthread....

  • andywilkie35 #7 3 years ago

    Haven't played a Footie Manager game since my addiction to Football Manager 07, might have to get involved again...

  • JammyPez #8 3 years ago

    The screenshots on the official site look pretty dreadful - CM looks to be visually ahead this year. And it had a Match Analysis tool about 3 years ago!
    This is going towards the PES/FIFA flip seemingly.

  • Yossarian #9 3 years ago

    Last year's game was the most disappointing in years for me. Plagued by bugs and errors, not to mention the whole fiasco over DRM/online enabling. They need to do a lot to win me back.

    For starters, it would be nice if two-three of my players weren't injured every match, and at least one seriously injured once a month. And this is after the patches.
    Edited by 1 at 12/08/09 @ 15:02

  • andywilkie35 #10 3 years ago

    @Yossarian

    In regards to the injuries, were you Arsenal by chance? :p

  • Physically_Insane #11 3 years ago

    I hope they fix the problem when you play for 5 or 6 seasons and it goes slow as fuck.

  • Waffleaber #12 3 years ago

    I tend to pick FM up after the January transfer window patch as by then the majority of the bugs are wiped out.

    Anyway I'm taking a break from 09 for a couple of weeks after back to back 5-0 losses against lesser opposition caused me to throw my housemates cat out the window onto the conservatory roof. Game makes me rage.

  • T4RG4 #13 3 years ago

    I've played FM for years but 09 really turned me off. So very broken (to play in-depth) for quite some time, it became a chore to play. The DRM mess was comical too.

    I could never buy another FM game on release because its an exercise in dissapointment. I dont really have the time for it at the moment either, so that's quite handy! Maybe one to look at a few months down the line when most of the stuff has been found by the community and partially fixed by the devs.


    EDIT - Just looked at the screenshots. Really poor style once again :(
    Edited by 1 at 12/08/09 @ 16:52

  • ForburyLion #14 3 years ago

    Would it not be worth including a PC port of the PSP version in with the main PC version, It was alot easier to get into and reminded me of CM00-01 which was fantastic.

    Also can they allow users to customise games more, take off the transfer windows, set starting budgets... basically allowing us to set our own difficulty/fun settings.

  • hiddenranbir #15 3 years ago

    We'll see how it fares at release. FM09 was so buggy and had terrible UI decisions in some aspects. Depends if 10 listened to the right feedback.

    I'm playing FM09 as we speak, of course. But I think I'll actually get both CM and FM to see if FM has done a Konami and let the old guard to get back in front.

  • TrevSkyline #16 3 years ago

    How can they avoid the Xbox 360 and PS3???

  • Eraysor #17 3 years ago

    I can't help but think they rejig the interface just to make it look more different to last years than anything else, but I'll still buy it anyway.

  • normannormal #18 3 years ago

    Physically_ Insane said "I hope they fix the problem when you play for 5 or 6 seasons and it goes slow as fuck."

    I think you'll find that was an anti piracy measure and would only be experienced by people playing a cracked copy after an update. Is that the case Mr Insane?!!?

  • normannormal #19 3 years ago

    jammy pez, not a chance, CM looks different, more gamey I guess. It's looked different and more gamey than FM since the split, and it's always been rubbish. I hope it's better than it has been, it'd be nice to see some competition to spur things on a bit, but after being let down since SI left Eidos I won't be holding my breath for CM i'm afraid.
    As for FM09, it's a brilliant game, but it was horribly flawed at launch. Once the activation was fixed and patches sorted it it was great. Looks like SI have done what they should have and concentrated on making it brilliant out of the box.
    Edited by 1 at 12/08/09 @ 22:10

  • immateriaux #20 3 years ago

    "I think you'll find that was an anti piracy measure and would only be experienced by people playing a cracked copy after an update. Is that the case Mr Insane?!!? "

    Guys in work have a boxed copy and have given up playing it because after whatever number of seasons they had played, it was going too slow to be bearable.

    I can't comment directly because SI excluded me from playing it due to their hapless DRM implementation. I also object to anyone that robs PC data/stats without permission, as FM2009 does. I hope they at least show a bit more courtesy to their users this year.

  • THFourteen #21 3 years ago

    Problem now is that a season of FM09 takes me about 2 weeks to play! And thats w ithout having any other games on the go... Back in the day you could play a whole season in an evening, i almost think that they need to go back to this.

    the FMH10 looks a little dissapointing - exactly the same game as last year which was the same game as the year before which was the same game as the year before that.

    having said that, yeah i'll probably buy the PSP version at least.

    If they would convert the PSP version to an iphone version.... nuff said.

  • Cujo #22 3 years ago

    Bought FM09 - took so long to play a season that I stopped enjoying the game and up reverting back to 08. Not looking forward to 10 (bigger, slower, more bugs, more patches and a powerhouse machine to run it). :(

  • Mkwone #23 3 years ago

    Slightly disapointed by the lack of more new featues. the tactical wizards and shout have recently been released for Football Manager Live and i think they work well. With sliders i knew what i wanted but not how. Being able to press a button and it doesn it for you is alot more natural and realistic.

    What i really wanted to see was more emphasis on training like what CM have done along with set pieces likes CM and FIFA. Being able to practice set pieces and co-ordinate them seems like a real way to tinker.

    Maybe it's best to have a season to polish and get things working betterr especially the 3D. I'll still get it, but only at a good price.

  • hiddenranbir #24 3 years ago

    One big worry is they STILL won't improve the AI to be a long term challenge. They can't scout properly, they don't invest to actually strengthen the team. In my current FM09 game, Real Madrid has over a billion pounds(to confirm why their value was over that) in the back yet they aren't strengthening their side at all, nor are they even giving me competition in signing the top players.