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Championship Manager 5 (UK release 18/3/05;1/4/05 other nations), confirmed features:

R

rpvankasteren

Fan Favourite
BGS are working on the newest installment of the Championship Manager series, for Eidos. Well, not really, they're writing a new game, to continue the old license, really. The actual sequel to CM 03/04 will be Football Manager 2005, written by SI and released by SEGA. For info on this game, I direct you to the FM'05 info sticky.

This thread is open for discussion, and all new features will be added to this first post when brought to the public.

FAQ, dated 22nd january 2004 (from www.championshipmanager.co.uk)

Code: 
[b]1  When is CM5 being released?[/b] 
   The simple answer is ‘when it is ready’. At the moment we’re aiming for a
   pre Christmas release – but stop! We will only let you play it, when it is ready. 


[b]2  What can I expect from the next CM? [/b]
   We’ve spent a lot of time investigating what it is that makes Champ Man so popular.
   As a result we’re going to make sure that CM5 will be the most realistic, detailed
   and addictive football management game ever. 

   We’re also working on the technical aspects of the code. Following the release
   of CM4, game speed has become an issue. Rest assured that CM5 will do a whole
   lot more number crunching in a fraction of the time – so you’ll be able to immerse
   yourself in the world of Champ Man without the painful loading times. 


[b]3  How many leagues and players will there be in the next CM? [/b]
   The CM5 team are dedicated to produce the most detailed and realistic management game yet.
   To this end we have carried out meticulous focus testing to determine exactly
   what people want. At this early stage in development, it is impossible to give
   a definite answer on the final number of playable leagues, but we’re working towards
   including the whole world of football. This will ensure we deliver the intricate detail
   and realism that has made Champ Man the game it is. 


[b]4  When will more information and screenshots be released?[/b] 
   We’re committed to keeping the fans up to date and involved with the every step
   of the development process, so news updates and screen shots will be made
   available as a soon as is humanly possible. Stay tuned for regular bulletins on
   the latest progress. 


[b]5  Will there be a playable demo of CM5? [/b]
   But of course! Not until it is ready you understand! 


[b]6  Will CM5 be released on any consoles? [/b]
   Stay tuned for an announcement! 


[b]7  Will CM5 have a 3D match engine? [/b]
   The possibility of a 3D match engine for CM5 is something that was carefully
   considered, but the answer is: 
   No. 
   However, the coding of the CM5 match engine enables it to calculate 3D movement.
   This means that the 2D match engine will 
   A) Be more realistic than before, 
   and 
   B) That a 3D match engine is a possibility for future releases. But due to our
   commitment to the CM scene, we’ll gauge the opinion of the CM community before
   taking any major steps. 


[b]8  Will CM5 be released in my country or language? [/b]
   If you purchased the last CM in your country, you should be able to get the next.
   And in our continued quest of world domination, CM5 will also be available in English,
   French, Italian, Portuguese, Polish and Spanish. 


[b]9  Where is the player data from? [/b]
   As CM fans, we know that realistic, detailed player data is the heart of the game.
   As a result, we have recruited the services of an agency that specialises in providing
   player info and statistics to professional football clubs. 


[b]10 I want to be a beta tester or a researcher, can I help? [/b]
   We’re really keen
   to get fans involved in the development of CM5. However, we’re yet to make a
   final decision how best to use the burgeoning community. If you’re interested in
   helping out, stay tuned. 


[b]11 I have some suggestions for the next CM, can I help? [/b]
   You certainly can. We’re keen to listen to sensible and constructive suggestions
   on the game, after all, we all want CM5 to be better than 01-02 and 03-04 put together. 
   Any suggestions you might have should be directed towards the suggestions forum/page. 


[b]12 Who is developing CM5? [/b]
   ‘Beautiful Game Studios’ is a new development studio set up to deliver the best
   Champ Man experience to date. The studio employs 30 staff with over 100 years
   cumulative years development experience with over 90+ published titles
   – 66% of them football titles. So when it come to football these guys know a thing or two ;-) 
   A profiles section will be coming soon, so you can see who is behind the next CM
   (and laugh at their photos). 


[b]13 Where can I come for customer support for CM? [/b]
   Customer and technical support for all versions of Championship Manager is available at
   [url]http://www.eidos.co.uk/support/index.html[/url] 


[b]14 What will be in the new [url]www.championshipmanager.co.uk[/url] site? [/b]
   The new site will be the definitive site for all Champ Man addicts. We’ll keep
   you up to date with the development process on the new game, and there’ll
   be an opportunity for you to tell us what you’d like to see in CM5. Along with all
   the usual downloads and forums, we’re planning on revolutionising the
   CM community. Watch this space…….

A recent interview (9th july 2004) on

eurogamer.net:
Championship Manager 5
by Kristan Reed


One of the great shake ups in gaming history occurred last year when Sports Interactive upped sticks from its long-term publishing partner Eidos and set up a long-term deal with Sega, leaving Eidos with the brand name, but no-one to develop it. Realising the massive brand awareness of the series, it knew that it had to do all it could to keep one of its most valuable franchises alive.

But how? It'd be like EMI trying to forge a new Beatles out of a disparate set of session musicians surely? Just how much awareness does the public have of game developers, or do they really ignore those logo screens every time they boot the game up? Whatever the rights and wrongs of keeping the brand alive, Eidos went out and forged a team roughly twice the size of SI, called Beautiful Game Studios, and is currently in the latter stages of getting out its first Championship Manager, to be known as Championship Manager 5.

Who's in the team? All manner of experienced old hands who've worked on a truckload of footy games for the likes of Anco and Silicon Dreams to name but two. But hang on, aren't they action footy games, as opposed to management games? We'll leave the doubts and cynicism aside for now and give them centre stage to talk about what they believe will be not just as good as the old CMs, but actually better, with vastly improved loading time ("about four times the game for your money" says Eidos' PR chief) leading to more time involved in the action and less time trotting off for another cup of tea, not to mention claims of a more intuitive user interface and more accurate data. Bold claims indeed, and ones that their rivals over at Sports Interactive will be especially interested in as they gear up to release their game - also in time for Christmas...

Eurogamer: What's new in this version of Championship Manager?

Dave Rutter: What we've done in this version is address three of the main concerns of the ChampMan fans, which is the speed of the game, the user accessibility and also the depth and accuracy. I've selected 59 divisions from 25 nations; at this point I click confirm which generates a full detail match with all of that information in it. I should be standing up to have a cup of tea, however - that's it - it's loaded now, full detail and everything there, so that gives you an idea of how quickly it will generate it.
Now, whether those leagues are actually the ones we go with in the final game we can't quite say yet. It'll be somewhere around that region.

The other key difference is the user interface and the way that's working. We've only got the top bar and bottom bar now - we haven't got the side bar anymore. The reason for that is basically we did some research into academic user interface, and basically there was a lot of unnecessary mouse movement, so we've done away with that so it's a lot more user friendly.

Eurogamer: How have you sped up the loading?

Dave Rutter: Because we've started from scratch we've come up with architecture for the game that allows us to do a lot of background processing. What we're not doing is waiting until it's loaded everything in. It's pretty much all done in the background while no-one's looking.

The other cool thing we've got at the moment is what we're calling 'Constant Gameplay', so if I click 'Continue Game', whilst we're actually processing the match, in the background we're generating fixtures. I can cruise around the front end, and conclude discussions with players. It's still processing, and I can take a look at, for example, Ashley Cole and back to the Arsenal team and do all of those things while it's generating stuff, which is pretty cool.

Another massive improvement we've made over previous ChampMans is the fact that the training has been overhauled.

What we've done is look at the schedules, and get Mervyn Day, our football expert, to help do that for us. We've got quite a number here - fitness, injury, recovery, etc and all of these have been set up by one of the highest qualified coaches in the world, which is cool.

Eurogamer: Will the data be as accurate as previous Championship Managers?

Dave Rutter: We've taken a three pronged approach. We've approached PFS, a professional outfit, to provide us with information and they've worked with teams like Real Madrid for example. We also have an in-house research team, and what they're doing is shaping that to make sure the PFS are happy, and also some of our regular forum users and people from the community as well contributing, so we've got lots of secondary checks to make sure that it's there. We believe it's the most accurate you can get.

Eurogamer: You mentioned in the presentation that people who may have stopped playing Championship Manager for whatever reason will want to play this one. What will it be, essentially, about this version that's going to make them want to come back?

Dave Rutter: The speed more than anything. Speaking from myself, I'm a married man - if I was still playing championship Manager at home, I wouldn't be a married man. I think that it's the amount of time that's spent playing the game - a lot of that time is spent not doing anything. Now we reckon we get 50ish per cent more time playing the game, doing what you want rather than sitting down waiting for things to happen.

Eurogamer: Is that partly due to the improved loading time and the fact that you can do stuff while the match is going on?

Dave Rutter: Absolutely. It just helps that you can just get with stuff. We've addressed that and also just the finding your way around the front end and making sure it's the same. On the training, you can go into each of the schedules and tweak things bit by bit, for example on a half hourly basis for each day of the week. Alternatively, what you can do is set up things based on light medium and intense training, and it will generate a training schedule based on that. All of this has been designed by Mervyn Day, our football expert, and so it's been a pleasure learning about base running!

Eurogamer: How did you get him involved? Why was it him and not someone else?

Dave Rutter: We wanted to make sure that the football expert we got involved with was someone who not only was accessible to us and based in this country, but worked for a top club and knew their stuff. Not just old fashioned training or whatever, but was completely up to date. Obviously Mervyn, from Charlton Athletic, I think their performances this season have shown what a relatively small-ish club without the huge budget of, say, Chelsea, can achieve with experts. With his UEFA Pro License he's one of a handful of people who've got that.

Eurogamer: What's the recommended spec for running the game on?

Dave Rutter: We've got a minimum spec of PIII 700 with 128MB of RAM, and that's what we're aiming at at the moment, and it's perfectly playable. It still faster than previous ChampMans loading and processing. With any application, the more RAM you've got the better, but because of the way the architecture works, it's processing stuff in the background it doesn't have as much of an impact on the game as you might do otherwise.

Eurogamer: What hard disk space will it take up?

Dave Rutter: We're not sure at the moment. The big deal for hard disk space is obviously saved games, and we're minimizing the size of saved games at the moment by basically procedurally regenerating them, so rather than having to store every little piece of information we can regenerate it from the play disk reference number - things like that.

Eurogamer: What games have you worked on in the past?

Dave Rutter: Everyone likes to point out the fact that I've worked on Lego games, so I worked in Football Mania/Soccer Mania. Before that I worked on a number of football titles for Silicon Dreams, so UEFA Champions League licensed games, World League Soccer, and a few others as well.

Eurogamer: What's your role on this?

Dave Rutter: I'm senior producer - it's a lot of pre-production, making sure that the team's in place, the schedule's in place, and at the moment it's mostly to do with chasing up issues, looking after localisation, a lot of testing, glorified pizza delivery boy...

Eurogamer: In the 2D match engine, why did you choose to slightly elevate the pitch?

Dave Rutter: We felt it gave a nicer perspective on the match. You can see the height of the ball well. It's an aesthetic choice really. We've got a number of different speed settings, 2x, 4x, 6x, 60x. One of the key improvements we made in this version with regards what you can see is the action zones which is basically a statistical representation of where play is happening and who's winning in those areas.

Eurogamer: What about the tactical changes?

Dave Rutter: Within tactics, we've got a couple of choices now. Rather than just having off the ball runs, we've also got some feeds, so I can feed the ball to a particular player, or I can feed it to a specific place - so you could get him to play a ball into the box as much as possible. We've also got a lot more zones we can placed the player in.

Eurogamer: Are you looking to extend this out onto the Xbox eventually?

Dave Rutter: We've got no plans currently to do console versions.

Eurogamer: You're looking to release this when...?

Dave Rutter: In the Autumn.

Eurogamer: Are you looking to make this an annual game?

Dave Rutter: I would have thought so. It's probably going to follow a similar release schedule to previous versions in that there will be a full review and then a seasonal update, although we're at the remit of Eidos, basically, they'll say 'we want this', and then we'll go away and think about it.

Eurogamer: How do you think this will rate against Football Manager?

Dave Rutter: I hope it's rated favourably. I think there are obviously great expectations, not just from Eidos, but from the community at large. There certainly is from me and my friends and from the team as well, as we're all keen to do it well. Equally we're all looking forward to playing Football Manager ourselves and see what they've done, and hopefully they will play two great games rather than one.

Eurogamer: How many people are working on CM5 who've worked on previous CMs?

Dave Rutter: We have two people who've worked on CM before. Having said that, it's a team of 30, 18 programmers. I think every single person has worked on at least one football game.

Eurogamer: How many researchers have you got?

Dave Rutter: Internally, eight researchers on the team, and then we have the company PFS - but I don't know how many people work for them, and then we have a number of correspondents as well from the community.

Eurogamer: Sum up CM5 - why would you want to buy it?

Dave Rutter: It's faster, it's more user friendly and it's more accurate.
Click to expand...

From ChampionshipManager.co.uk, dated 2nd august 2004:
EIDOS ANNOUNCES CHAMPIONSHIP MANAGER 5 FOR PLAYSTATION 2 AND XBOX
by Keir Edmonds - 02/08/2004


Eidos, one of the world’s leading publishers and developers of entertainment software, announces that the number one selling football management series Championship Manager is to appear on Xbox and, for the first time ever, PlayStation 2. Championship Manager 5, the latest instalment in the series, will be released in spring 2005 on both formats. The game is being developed by Gusto Games.

(...)PC version of Championship Manager 5 will be released in October 2004.(...)

Jonathan Kemp, European managing director of Eidos says:
“This is a great opportunity for us to build upon the phenomenal success of the Championship Manager brand by taking it to a whole new audience. We have long been aware of the great demand among PlayStation 2 owners to experience the world’s most successful and realistic football management game. Our new technology being developed for Championship Manager 5 has been designed in a way to enable a faithful recreation of the Championship Manager experience on PlayStation 2 and Xbox.”
Click to expand...
 
A

Aveirenses

Banned
Life Ban
"I've selected 59 divisions from 25 nations; at this point I click confirm which generates a full detail match with all of that information in it. I should be standing up to have a cup of tea, however - that's it - it's loaded now, full detail and everything there, so that gives you an idea of how quickly it will generate it.
Now, whether those leagues are actually the ones we go with in the final game we can't quite say yet. It'll be somewhere around that region."
I won't believe this until I see it, but if it's true, I'll surely get CM over FM. That would be just amazing to have it load so many leagues that fast, I hardly have the patience to load up 5 leagues, let alone 59! :confused:
 
R

rpvankasteren

Fan Favourite
Yes, and that's on a PIII 700MHz with 128MB RAM.

Of course we don't know how extensive the DB was at the time of this test. They might have played with a total of 2000 players in those 59 divisions.

They tackled the speed problem first thing, and they seem to have succeeded. The SI team did the same though, so no real decision can be made, towards CM5, from that.
 
C

champdave

SG Sheffield Authority
Re: Championship Manager 5, confirmed features:

I have a cunning plan, I'm getting FM and my neighbor CM, so I can try both. If FM has the same speed reductions then it'll be great. The new 2.5D match engine in CM0405 is just strange tho.

And I'll be getting TCM2005 as well :$(H)
 
W

willem

Reserve Team
CM5 will be coming to PS2 and Xbox. (Spring 2005)
There are also rumours that BGS will release the demo in September.
 
R

rpvankasteren

Fan Favourite
Yes, and the PC release date has been narrowed down to october 2004:
From ChampionshipManager.co.uk, dated 2nd august 2004:
EIDOS ANNOUNCES CHAMPIONSHIP MANAGER 5 FOR PLAYSTATION 2 AND XBOX
by Keir Edmonds - 02/08/2004


Eidos, one of the world’s leading publishers and developers of entertainment software, announces that the number one selling football management series Championship Manager is to appear on Xbox and, for the first time ever, PlayStation 2. Championship Manager 5, the latest instalment in the series, will be released in spring 2005 on both formats. The game is being developed by Gusto Games.

(...)PC version of Championship Manager 5 will be released in October 2004.(...)

Jonathan Kemp, European managing director of Eidos says:
“This is a great opportunity for us to build upon the phenomenal success of the Championship Manager brand by taking it to a whole new audience. We have long been aware of the great demand among PlayStation 2 owners to experience the world’s most successful and realistic football management game. Our new technology being developed for Championship Manager 5 has been designed in a way to enable a faithful recreation of the Championship Manager experience on PlayStation 2 and Xbox.”
Click to expand...
 
V

Virgo

Guest
really hope they enhance the game closer to CM01/02 in terms of match realism.

I'm sick of having strikers scoring 20 goals in 10 games and midfielders 1 goal in 20 games
 
R

rpvankasteren

Fan Favourite
I guess you're better of with FM for a realistic match engine. With this being their first CM-type match-engine and all. It might turn out good, but it's a lot harder for BGS than for SI. 't Would be a tremendous achievement if they DO create a realistic one. :)
 
R

rpvankasteren

Fan Favourite
No it wouldn't... SI would be a monopolist again. TCM has a very different target public from CM.

Anyway: BGS is a semi-independent developer, so the sale of Eidos doesn't necessarily mean they go to EA. Their contract may be released if EA doesn't want CM. A third option is the cancellation of CM, but I think they'll sooner cancel TCM.

Ubisoft (Football World Manager (PC); Alex Ferguson Player Manager 2002 (GBA)) are also in contention, btw ;)
 
R

rpvankasteren

Fan Favourite
Originally posted at gamesindustry.biz
Eidos confirms rumours of takeover talks
Rob Fahey 12:12 03/08/2004
Share price on the up as buyout prospect looms on the horizon


British publisher Eidos Plc has confirmed that it is in preliminary talks with a number of companies regarding a possible takeover bid, responding to recent speculation which has caused the company's share price to rebound.

In a trading update issued this morning, Eidos said that "preliminary discussions with a small number of parties in relation to possible business combinations" are taking place - but warned that it was not certain whether these would lead to an offer being made.

Shares in Eidos rose by over 10 per cent yesterday, carrying the company's stock price back over the 100 pence mark, and a further rise of almost four per cent has brought the price to 111 pence today in the wake of the announcement.

Eidos' share price had previously collapsed to around 90 pence after the company issued profits warnings ahead of the end of its financial year on June 31st. At that time, the company denied that any approach had been made regarding a takeover.
Click to expand...
 
Zlatan

Zlatan

Fan Favourite
meh, I think CM would become crap if EA buys it. First I was converted from FIFA to CM and now I think I'm going to buy PES as action footy game instead of FIFA. So no EA in my house anymore and I think more will do the same if EA doesn't stop producing this ridiculous games.
 
P

PSVFOREVER

Fan Favourite
Originally posted by Zlatan
meh, I think CM would become crap if EA buys it. First I was converted from FIFA to CM and now I think I'm going to buy PES as action footy game instead of FIFA. So no EA in my house anymore and I think more will do the same if EA doesn't stop producing this ridiculous games.
Click to expand...

I like Need for Speed though:p
 
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