MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
Sports Interactive’s Football Manager is one of the most successful games franchises in UK games history, and it continues to stay top of the league.
According to a tweet from Miles Jacobson, head of Sports Interactive and director of the Football Manager series, the game surpassed a million sales for the fifth game in a row.
At circa 4am the millionth FM17 was activated. This is our 5th game in a row to sell 1m units. Thank you for your continued support!
— Miles Jacobson 💙 (@milesSI) August 21, 2017
The figures take into account returns and free weekend trials that did not lead to game purchases, so those sales are purely sales based. The game has also gone back up to number one this week in the physical PC games chart.
Football Manager started as a series in 2004 following a split between Sports Interactive and Eidos Interactive. The former started the new game following losing the naming rights for the Championship Manager series that has been a mainstay of the football management genre since 1992.
The game has been criticised and acclaimed for its approach to real world issues, following Football Manager 2017‘s Brexit scenarios and it has raised money for charity War Child with a percentage of every copy going to support the conflict charity.
The game has since branched out from its main game by offering both a mobile version on an annual basis and the more streamlined, less statistic heavy, Football Manager Touch. The game often heralds some interesting and quirky real life stories, with a recent world worked for the longest ever single game of Football Manager by Darren Bland who reached 154 seasons with Fiorentina.
