Football Manager 2011
"We're trying to make a simulation here. We can't dumb it down."
Because there are some optimisations that will make it quicker. There are some areas that are slightly more automated if you want them to be.
For example, training, it's up to you whether you want to do the training or not. But optimisation means the processing in-between matches will be a bit faster.
We're not dumbing down the game at all. There are still a bunch of new features to announce, that if people want to use them in-depth then yes, that will end up with the seasons taking a bit longer.
If you want to play seasons through really quickly then the PSP game is there for that and our previous iPhone release. If you want an in-depth sim then that's what Football Manager's there for.
There is one planned, I just don't know when and we don't have a feature set yet. That's why we haven't announced anything on it.
We're still deciding whether we keep that as a pre-Christmas or as a March release, as the first release was. There is a team of people working on a new iPhone game.
The iPhone version works fine on iPad by pressing the times two button. It actually scales up quite nicely. I sit at home playing it on the iPad.
You know what? I haven't tried. So that's a really good question. I will go and ask someone in our test room to try it.
I know there are certain new features that might make that difficult but I doubt it would take that much tweaking. But whether you can load in previous edited stuff into the FM11 editor, I'm not sure.
I will get someone to look at it, and he should ask us that question on the forum once we've spoken about what's changed in the editor this year. By then I'll have an answer for he or she.
We've announced a few new features on there today. The problem with the PSP version is we've run out of memory on the PSP.
So we can only add new stuff on the PSP when we've done other optimisations to give us some more space.
There's a new improved skin. We've improved the squad selection, and there are improved graphics and bug fixes and polishing bits and bobs.
Being brutally honest, there are not a load of new features on the PSP version this year because anything we want to do we can't because it 'aint got no more memory.
With the backroom advice stuff we added to FM10 it makes it a lot easier to play the game. There are loads of areas you can go into the backroom advice once a week, click a few buttons and they're done for you. It is possible to play the game in an easier way.
But we are trying to make a simulation here. We can't dumb it down. The iPhone and PSP games are there to be more fun and lighter. The PC and Mac game is going to continue going down the route of simulation.
As always, we will be releasing a demo a couple of weeks before release. It'll be a half season demo. There's a good seven, eight hours of gameplay in there. Try it out and then decide.
We always do demos. We believe they're the most important thing we can do to encourage people to buy the game. Let them not only try the game first, but take their save game and continue it on if or when they buy the box.
It's also my best argument against piracy. If we've released a free demo that's lengthy, then there really is no reason to pirate the game.
No, of course not. People who pirate are still going to pirate, but it gives me an argument against it.