Football Manager goes 3D

There was a lot of hype surrounding the announcement of new features in Football Manager 2009 for PC and Mac as well Football Manager Handheld 2009 for PSP on Youtube. The biggest and most obvious news is that the match engine is finally making the move to 3D - no other football management game has done a 3D match engine well, it will be interesting to see if Sports Interactive can get it right the first time. I have a feeling they will, they have yet to disappoint me (at least when it comes to the PC games).

- This is something we have always said that when the technology is there we wanted do. And we have been working on this for nearly three years, says Miles Jacobson, Studio Manager.

Sports Interactive have been in beta testing for Football Manager Live, their MMO take on the genre, for nearly a year now and the amount of testing the match engine has seen has been of great benefit to the development. Sports Interactive have also used some of the motion capture data Sega of Japan have used for the Virtua Striker series. For those who do not care about 3D, the 2D engine is still in there, along with the trusty text commentaries.

Here's a run through of the other areas that Sports Interactive have improved on since Football Manager 2008 (sorry about the long list, but I'm a bit of a FM-junkie I'm afraid):

- Assistant Manager feedback - The assistant manager will give feedback during the games on motivation and how your tactics are working.

- Media - Generally expanded but the big news is that press conferences have been added. Press conferences are held when you are signed, before and after matches and you will not just answer questions but build relationships with journalists.

- Training - You can now ask players to learn "preferred moves" (play preferred moves have been in FM for a few years, now you can ask players to try and learn them).

- Equality - You can now be a female manager.

- Board Confidence - Cleaned up all the errors fans have reported. Two added parts Squad harmony and Club Stature.

- All 51 countries and competitions updated. More than 350,000 players and staff in the database.

- Worked hard on modelling the financial models of the different countries more correctly.

- Revamped user interface and added wide screen support for the first time.

- Transfer System - "We ripped it out and wrote it from scratch."

On the PSP Sports Interactive are adding in features that we have seen on PC already. You can now play up to three top European leagues at the same time, and the 2D match engine will be viewable.

Sports Interactive have released to videos on Youtube:

The first one, is a fluffy piece on the development of the series as a whole, and the nature of Football Manager: Announcement Part One

The second one contains all the juicy details Sports Interactive wishes to reveal at this time as told by Miles Jacobson: Feature Announcement Part Two