Speaking of Football Manager, the Personal Computer (PC) game developed by a company called Sports Interactive (SI) continues to experience very significant developments. And the development of FM itself is inseparable from friction and elbowing between SI and its predecessor, Eidos Interactive.
Yes, before Football Manager was created, SI was indeed working with Eidos. In 1992, the two British companies collaborated to create a game called Championship Manager (CM). Championship Manager then replaced the other soccer manager simulation games that were popular at the time such as Premier Manager and The Manager.
In the early 2000s, Championship Manager increasingly demonstrated its success. According to Sportskeeda, Championship Manager 4, released in March 2003, set a world record with the fastest PC game sales on the first day of release.
But apparently Championship Manager 4 gave birth to a lot of dissatisfaction from its users. Besides experiencing slowness in many high-end PCs at the time, CM 4 was considered unrealistic like CM in previous editions. The transfer process is too easy which makes small teams able to easily buy big players.
This is thought to be the main factor SI escape from Eidos. In its separation, SI gets the right to use the database and match engine. Meanwhile Eidos gets the rights on behalf of “Championship Manager” and the interface.
Since then, SI and Eidos have seemed to compete. SI partnered with Sega Europe aka Sega, while Eidos worked with Beautiful Games Studios (BGS). SI and Sega then launched Football Manager 2005, while Eidos and BGS spawned Championship Manager 5.
But FM was already seen one step ahead of the Championship Manager at the time. In addition to the first release (FM released in November 2004, CM in March 2005), FM has features that CM does not have such as pre and post match information, recruiting coaching staff, mind games between managers, termination of player contracts, player loan options, and many more.
CM 5 itself did face a number of problems before its release. Initially CM 5 was scheduled to be released in October 2004. However, coding problems and many bugs in the game’s trial made the CM release delayed by five months.
As a result, FM 2005 outperformed CM 5 in terms of sales. According to Eurogamer, FM 2005 occupies the 5th fastest selling PC game of all time. While CM 5, although also released in several game consoles such as Xbox, Playstation 2, and Playstation Portable, disappoint its users with a number of bugs in the game.
FM then began to explore the game console in the following years. Just like CM, FM began to spread Xbox (2006) and PSP (2007).
But FM on PC is getting the hearts of its users after creating a 3D match engine, which was the first in the world, on FM 2009. Even then SI announced its exclusive partnership with Arsenal, thus earning an official Arsenal license.
When FM shows its superiority, CM is less innovating in subsequent series. There was no innovation in CM 2007. Innovation was only born when CM 2008 presented a multi-player mode. Even when FM 2009 presented a 3D match engine in the 2009 edition, CM did not produce the latest edition.
CM actually wanted to launch the 2008/2009 season edition in April 2009. However, because it was close to the end of the season, the release was finally canceled, and only aired at the end of September 2009, under the name CM 2010.
But despite displaying 3D match engines such as FM, CM 2010 was less successful in the market. Though FM is increasingly global and increasingly awaited every newest edition. Finally in 2011, CM no longer produced the latest edition for PCs. Championship Manager 2011 only released on Apple phones.
Seeing this, the Japanese game company, Square Enix, took over the Championship Manager from Eidos. Even so, CM is no longer released for PC (even though FM is currently one of the prima donna games on PC). In 2013, Square Enix launched the 2014 edition of CM, but not under the name Championship Manager, but Champ Man 14.
Only in 2016 did Square Enix again use the name Championship Manager in their game, Championship Manager 2017. But with the switch of Championship Manager to a mobile game, this shows that SI has proven themselves that they have made Football Manager as a simulation of the best soccer manager game on PC , defeating Eidos’ Championship Manager.
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