Football Manager 2011

Football Manager 2011 was the most pirated PC game in the series, Sports Interactive has told Eurogamer.

The Football Manager podcast is on the road, and Sports Interactive overlord Miles Jacobson wants you to participate - today!

SEGA is "happy" with sales of Football Manager 2011 – despite describing them as "slow".

Earlier this month SEGA said Football Manager 2011 was its third best-selling game of this financial year, with 690,000 global sales for the PC and PSP version combined.

In its financial note to investors SEGA described sales of all its games in Europe and North America as "slow". Indeed sales of the boxed version of Football Manager are flat, but its European boss has defended Sports Interactive's football management simulation series, pointing to digital sales as evidence of growth.

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Sales of Platinum Games' Vanquish, Sports Interactive's Football Manager 2011 and Nintendo platforms game Sonic Colours in Europe and North America were "slow", SEGA has said.

In its latest financial report the Japanese company said demand for videogames was "generally weak" in western markets.

Why? Because of "sluggish personal consumption". SEGA sold just under six million game units in Europe, 5.8 million in the US and 1.9 million in Japan and other regions.

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Former Manchester United super-sub Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has admitted to using Football Manager to practise for his new position as manager of Molde Fotbalklubb - a top Norwegian team (and nothing to do with damp).

Sports Interactive studio director Miles Jacobson has been appointed an OBE for services to the computer games industry in the New Year Honours list.

Football Manager 2011 has arrived on iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.

It's a shame when relationships end but it's often for the best. Football Manager and me had it all - long intimate evenings, weekends away, the occasional holiday. I'd thought we never split up. But eventually cracks began to appear, the physical side deteriorated, and we became strangers.

Football Manager 2011 hit the shelves last week, prompting a period of self-imposed solitude for the series' army of fans - the ones who willingly immerse themselves in an alternate reality of formation-tinkering, transfer negotiations and player discipline for days on end.

Football Manager 2011 is top of the UK all-formats chart.

Eurogamer's sister site Get Games is doing a special deal on our Game of the Week at the moment, allowing you to snap up Football Manager 2011 for a mere £23.99.

Back in the days before the games industry became the unceasing, year-long money-making juggernaut it is now and when Sports Interactive's football management games still went by the name Championship Manager, the series' yearly releases would vary between major full-price products that signified leaps forward for the series (Championship Manager 3, Championship Manager 4) and reduced-price offerings full of tweaks and data updates (Championship Manager: Season 02&03, etc.). Of course, that was a long time ago.

One of the complaints many Football Manager fans have these days is that they simply can't justify paying full price for each yearly FM release. After all, many of them argue, new match engines aside, each new version can't be all that much more evolved than the last, right? Well, usually that would be a valid argument. But this year, things are a little different.

When it comes to ground-breaking new features, Football Manager 2011 is unlikely to have your ticker skipping like a three year old with a lollipop shaped like a bear. But thanks to a truckload of intelligent tweaks and a generous shovelful of innovative and well-integrated additions, it turns out that this year's FM is the deepest, most complete and cohesive offering Sports Interactive has produced for some years.

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Two Football Manager 2011 demos will be released this week. The first arrives on Steam on Thursday, the second for everyone on Friday.

SEGA will focus on its "three pillars" as it looks to grow: Sonic the Hedgehog, Football Manager and Total War, the publisher's new European boss has revealed.

You never quite know what to expect from the Football Manager series. One year you're eulogising about major advancements like the top down 2D engine, or more recently its 3D successor; the next you're forced to scour the game, piecing together myriad tweaks and small new additions. This year's version looks like it's going to sit somewhere in the middle.

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Football Manager 2011 will allow gamers to publish achievements and goals to social networking sites such as Twitter, Sports Interactive's announced.

The PC and Mac versions of Football Manager 2011, and PSP game Football Manager Handheld 2011, will be released on 5th November, SEGA's confirmed to Eurogamer.

Mac screens.

Another year, another Football Manager game. But this time developer Sports Interactive has chucked in dynamic league reputation, the most requested feature from the community.

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SEGA's announced Football Manager 2011.

Football Manager 2011 screens.