Sega Scores With Sports Interactive
The strongest European Sega signing yet sees the announcement of Football Manager, which may well thrash its competitors.
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| Sports Interactive and Sega Europe will sell games like Football Manager 2005 all over the world. |
As the creators of the best selling Championship Manager, a brand owned by Eidos and to be continued under the development of Beautiful Game Studios, Sports Interactive can easily claim they have the winning formula for the best football management game around - but it's up to Sega to market the new brand, along with the Sports Interactive label, which the partners believe can become a "household name".
The deal will run for a period of five years, and will see the marketing and distribution of all Sports Interactive titles globally, making the develkoper's games available in the United States for the first time. And although the purchase of the 'Football Manager' trademark was successfully completed, it remains to be seen what the game will be called in the States. Some estimate they could buy the obvious name 'Soccer Manager' at an affordable price.
At the conference, which was introduced by Sega Europe President Naoya Tsurumi, Jacobson explained several of the new features in Football Manager 2005, the first in the series to be released in time for this Christmas. Fans of the developer's previous Championship Manager titles will be pleased to learn these new features include an updated user interface to make the game accessible to a broader audience, a refined game engine, updated database and competition rules, international player news, manager 'mind games' and much more.
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| Sega Deal: Jacobson |
In the eyes of Sega Europe, the potential and scale of this deal cannot be overstated. To illustrate, Sega Japan's highly positioned Hideki Okamura was in attendance at the conference to make sure everything was in order. The key point is that, in addition to Sega's development studios in Japan and the United States, Sega Europe is to produce its own content too, including content tailored for its territory. Sports Interactive is the latest player in Sega's 'product acquisition' rampage, and several more are to be announced shortly.
Sports Interactive even registered a series of new domain names for webmasters of Championship Manager fansites, as a way of offering them to switch their coverage to the new Football Manager series. The company is confident that the real fans of their old series will recognise the quality lives on in the new title.
Finally, and just for fun, the company is holding a competition for fans to design the logo for Football Manager, with the winner taking around a prize of £10,000 in cash. Beats paying some creative agency to come up with it. All budding Photoshop connoisseurs should enter the competition here.
Stay tuned for all the latest Sega news, including the progress made in the content stakes by the company's European division.
Director, Kikizo.com
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