Football Manager 2012 - Announced!

[Ludwig]

How is it a year behind? The game starts with you taking over a club in early July 2011, so his rating reflects him at that point. As of July 2011 in real life, he hadn't proven himself to be a top Championship player. He does however have a high potential rating, so he will improve as the season and your savegame progresses.

 

There are clear inconsistencies within player ratings within a squad, as I assume the Burnley researcher will have done Jack Cork, a Dutch researcher De Ridder etc. and their CAs will be a fair amount higher than some members of our squad (particularly Lallana, Fonte), when in reality this clearly isn't the case. Were I you, I'd have boosted them in a relative sense, that'd at least see Lallana on a par with Cork (something which presumably won't be the case, from your comments).

[Matthew Le God]

There are clear inconsistencies within player ratings within a squad, as I assume the Burnley researcher will have done Jack Cork, a Dutch researcher De Ridder etc. and their CAs will be a fair amount higher than some members of our squad (particularly Lallana, Fonte), when in reality this clearly isn't the case. Were I you, I'd have boosted them in a relative sense, that'd at least see Lallana on a par with Cork (something which presumably won't be the case, from your comments).

 

Jack Cork has played in the Premier League and had a very good season in the Championship. Lallana was in the Championship three years ago and had two very good years in League One, he didn't exactly stand out in the Championship back then. He needs to have a good season in order to catch up with Cork. I can't rate players for a game starting in July 2011, based on what you may think he will do by May 2012. I'm in no way saying I don't think Lallana is a good player for this League, I think he will prove to be one of the best players in it by the end of the season. But that is the key point, he has to prove/justify a rating beforehand. His high potential ability gives him room to do that as you progress through your first season managing Saints.

[Crab Lungs]

Why the rigidity in your ratings? If we followed your theory, Djimi Traore would be rated as a more competent footballer than Lallana when it simply isn't the case.

[Matthew Le God]

Why the rigidity in your ratings? If we followed your theory, Djimi Traore would be rated as a more competent footballer than Lallana when it simply isn't the case.

 

We have to follow guidelines in order to have a settled database. Otherwise you would get researchers with tinted glasses overrating all of their players and it would be a mess. We are allowed a degree of flexibility and the guidelines are just that - guidelines and not set in stone.

 

It's frustrating when you know, as we do, how good Lallana is. He's clearly one of the best Championship players but he won't be rated that way until next season, when he might well be a top flight player.

 

In any case, in FM11 as a League One player Lallana has a CA of 120. That puts him above many Championship players in the same position. In fact a CA of 120 in FM11 (version 11.3) would rank Lallana the joint 4th best attacking left sided player in the Championship in 2010/11.

 

Have a look for yourself on the FM11 editor and do a filtered search like I just did.

Edited 5 September, 2011 by Matthew Le God

[pap]

Isn't the PA only realised if you put them on the appropriate training regimes?

[Matthew Le God]

It is a mixture of a lot of factors, including training and match performance amongst other things.

[Benali Saint]

Cant wait for this to come out.

[Thedelldays]

no doubt it will be relatively out of date and still the same errors/snags as the others

 

but I will no doubt buy it

[Saint_clark]

I look forward to 2013 already tbh going by what MLG has said - if Connolly, Lallana, Lambert, Hammond etc. all carry this form on we'll be f*cking amazing in that version

[skintsaint]

MLG will the teams performance be heavily weighted on morale again this year or is it more about tactics?

[Matthew Le God]

Release date...

 

21st October 2011

 

Demo will be probably a couple of weeks before.

Edited 12 September, 2011 by Matthew Le God

[Benali Saint]

Going to preorder it

[Matthew Le God]

Miles Jacobson's blog...

 

One of the biggest improvements to the whole game this year is the new team report. Sports Interactive is lucky to have a large number of fans in amongst football, including many scouts who, with permission from their employers, give us the real scouting reports that they put together for teams when watching them for the manager.

 

Not only do you get these reports when scouting the next opposition – you can get a team report from any club in the game world just by asking one of your scouts to scout them.

 

So what, exactly, do the team reports show you?

 

Let’s start at the start, and the first screen you’ll see if the “strength overview” screen which shows you the top 3 players at each position at the club, with star ratings for each player.

 

If you want to go into even more depth than this, just click on the “position strength” options, and you can then see the ratings and rankings for every player and position in the oppositions (or your, if the team report is on your team) squad.

 

The next option is “team comparison”. This allows you to compare various stats between the two clubs, such as average age, height, weight, caps in the squad, wage bills and how many players are unavailable.

 

When you are looking at your own team report, the team comparison option will allow you to do a comparison with any team within your own division.

 

Clicking on the “all positions” tab gives you a comparison of average stats amongst your players, and if you then look at the following tabs to look at goalkeeper, you’ll see a comparison specifically for goalkeeping stats. And with the defenders tab, you see a comparison specifically for defenders. And for midfielders, and attackers.

 

The “last match” tab gives you information about the clubs last match, with stats such as shots, shots on target, possession etc., and the ratings, goals, and status of each player in that match for both the team you’ve scouted, and their opposition, plus a text match report. And the option to go and watch the match.

 

Tactic analysis gives you information on how you’ve fared when using specific tactics, with information on how many times you’ve started with those tactics, how many minutes you’ve used them, how many goals you’ve scored & how many you’ve conceded. As well as a breakdown for goals scored and conceded against different rankings of team – higher rated, similar rated and smaller rated. Along with a paragraph of analysis. For each tactic used.

 

Tactics faced gives you the same information, based on the tactics you’ve played against.

 

Next up is goal analysis – this shows you at what time in the game you have scored and conceded goals, and where your assists have come from, the types of goals you’ve scored and conceded, and the type of assist for or against you.

 

It’s quite comprehensive, and isn’t just available for first teams – it’s also available for international teams and your youth and reserve teams.

 

There are also improvements and new things with player scouting too.

 

You now have the choice of using a scouting pool to scout players. This would send a scout or member of your coaching staff to go and have a look at a player without you having to designate someone specific.

 

The scouts are also more intelligent, and will even tell you if they think the scouting mission you’ve sent them on is a waste of time. And if they’re a decent scout and you hire them, they might even bring a ready-made scouting list with them.

 

They’ll give you feedback on a players best tactical role, will directly compare them to others in your squad in their scout reports, give better feedback on player weaknesses, can be assigned to scout all your feeder clubs & ask them to scout for specific attributes.

 

But don’t think they’re always clever. If you just scout a player once, and they aren’t famous, you’d better keep scouting them every year or so, or else you might just find some of their stats become hidden again.

Edited 15 September, 2011 by Matthew Le God

[Ludwig]

Nice copying and pasting there.

[Matthew Le God]

So what if it is copied and pasted? I thought people that don't use the SI Forums may like to read it.

[Saint_clark]

Nice copying and pasting there.

 

Yeah, because he's really going to write his own in-depth analysis of a complicated new feature.

Edited 13 September, 2011 by Saint_clark

[Matthew Le God]

Exactly! I'm not allowed and if I do Sonic the Hedgehog will hunt me down.

[Matthew Le God]

I can however assure you that Adam Lallana won't have 4 for corners in FM12.

[Saint_clark]

Jesus. Terrible grammatical error by me in that post. Ashamed.

Moving right along...

[Benali Saint]

Cheers MLG

 

Worth the read

[skintsaint]

MLG will the teams performance be heavily weighted on morale again this year or is it more about tactics?

\

MLG do you know the answer? np if not.

Edited 13 September, 2011 by skintsaint

[Matthew Le God]

I didn't really notice that to be the case in FM11.

[Matthew Le God]

Here is some more info on tactics in FM12...

 

Edited 13 September, 2011 by Matthew Le God

[Guest flickjax]

That's my problem with it, seems to be a year behind with the ratings. I guess it has to be really, but it's frustrating when you know, as we do, how good Lallana is. He's clearly one of the best Championship players but he won't be rated that way until next season, when he might well be a top flight player.

 

 

Agree with this, but will get anyway

[Matthew Le God]

That's my problem with it, seems to be a year behind with the ratings. I guess it has to be really, but it's frustrating when you know, as we do, how good Lallana is. He's clearly one of the best Championship players but he won't be rated that way until next season, when he might well be a top flight player.

 

Agree with this

 

As I said earlier...

 

In FM11 as a League One player Lallana has a CA of 120. That puts him above many Championship players in the same position. In fact a CA of 120 in FM11 (version 11.3) would rank Lallana the joint 4th best attacking left sided player in the Championship in 2010/11.

[skintsaint]

I didn't really notice that to be the case in FM11.

 

seriously? lots of posts on sigames boards saying this and not many disagreeing.

[maddog]

Are there any researcher type positions going? Love Footy manager and want to try and get involved?

[Smirking_Saint]

It was all about Moral, if you had poor moral you tended to lose the majority of games and catch 22 is that it was so hard trying to improve moral whilst you were losing

 

P.S if you are not 100% happy with player ratings you can always edit them ?? As long as you don't make it unrealistic

[Matthew Le God]

Are there any researcher type positions going? Love Footy manager and want to try and get involved?

 

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/230107-Research-Vacancies-FM2012

[Matthew Le God]

[Ludwig]

So what if it is copied and pasted? I thought people that don't use the SI Forums may like to read it.

 

Would at least be worth linking back to where you got it from. It otherwise propogates false myths that you're some kind of oracle on FM (as demonstrated by the 'will this affect this question below), when in reality, you're a researcher and have little authority over others to answer such questions.

[Matthew Le God]

Would at least be worth linking back to where you got it from. It otherwise propogates false myths that you're some kind of oracle on FM (as demonstrated by the 'will this affect this question below), when in reality, you're a researcher and have little authority over others to answer such questions.

 

I'm not allowed to say anything that hasn't already been announced in public by SEGA/SI. Everything I link to on this forum is already available, I'm just doing so to inform those here that may not see it otherwise. Hardly "propagating false myths", especially when you have no idea how much I know or don't know about the game.

Edited 14 September, 2011 by Matthew Le God

[Matthew Le God]

Miles Jacobson's blog...

 

In previous editions of the Football Manager series, you didn’t have much control over the youth squad. Each year you’d find a bunch of players dumped into your youth squad at the start of the season. Not any more.

 

With FM 2012, we’ve given you more control over which players make it into your youth squad. Towards the end of the domestic season, you’ll get a news item in your inbox to inform you that your youth candidates are now ready to be assessed. Your coaches will already have assessed them and will be able to give you a scouting report for each one, as well as your assistant making recommendations to you on who you should, or shouldn’t, give a youth contract to.

 

Your staff will also arrange a match between your current youth squad, and the youth candidates so you can watch them in action, and you can also choose to have a further look at the players by allowing them to play in normal youth team matches for the few weeks when you are making your decisions on who to take on.

 

They are initially treated as an extra squad, so it’s easy to see who they are and scroll through them using quick flicks. After the youth candidates have played their evaluation match against your current youth team, they will stay on with your youth team as trialists for the following few weeks.

 

It’s a whole new level of control for those of you who want to micromanage to the lowest level– but as we know that this isn’t something that everyone will want to do, we’ve also made it so that your assistant can look after who to take on if you don’t want to go this in depth alongside the other things that you can ask your assistant to look after, such as team talks and press conferences.

 

One thing that we always need to balance when we’re adding in new features is that people play the game in different ways.

 

We know that some people will love the extra control on youth teams. But we also know that some people don’t bother with youth squads at all, just signing ready made players from other teams in the game. There are also many who manage at a lower level, and struggle to balance their finances between having a youth squad and the needs of the first team.

 

So we have an option for those people too.

 

So, for them, you can now ask your board to scrap your youth set up entirely. This will mean no new players coming through, and no need to try and get wages together to pay for the youth team. Your board may so no, of course, but if they’re looking to save money too, then it’s likely they’ll say yes.

 

There have also been improvements in the way that the newgens are generated, with country based positional “traits” now being used. In Brazil, for example, it’s rare that they have natural wingers in real life, with those players more likely to be wing backs, so you’ll see less Brazilian newgen wingers, and more Brazilian newgen wing backs.

 

The same can also be said of a players mental attributes. Players in Brazil, due to the way they grow up playing the game, are more likely to have flair. Players in Spain are more likely to play a short passing game. All of these traits are now reflected better in game.

 

We’ve also improved the way youth recruitment works at different clubs for their youth setup. The club’s youth recruitment network and youth facilities are not only linked to the quality of newgens produced by the youth setup, but also the scope of the recruitment. So clubs with excellent recruitment networks and state-of-the art facilities have the ability to attract youth players not just from the local regions, but from other continents as well.

 

There’s also been a big improvement in the way names are generated for all youth players, particularly in countries where there are lots of regions and names tend to be region specific.

[SuperMikey]

The youth team feature sounds good - but does that mean that new youth players will be able to consider contracts from other teams, or are they only available to sign for your youth team until they are told otherwise? I can envisage the frustration of having a quality youth player added to your team but getting poached by a bigger side before you can tie them down to a contract.

[St Marco]

Will they be adding more financial options this year? For example say you are at a club with a loan that runs out in the year 3 billion, will you have the option to pay this loan off ahead of time if you have the money?

 

Not sure if it is just me but i like trying to get the financial side of the club right (maybe that is just the business analyst in me!). So when i see the club has a loan that will take a huge chunk out of your monthly earnings it does **** me off. Surely there should be options to pay it back quicker if your club is making a lot of money?

 

Another thing i messed about in fm11 with some of the big clubs i.e Barca. I wanted to see if i could make them bankrupt by buying players like Pullis for £50m! When it got down to £0 basically the chairman lent the club £200m......so again i go and buy some more players. Same thing happened again, chairman gave £200m to Barca.....in real life obviously that is unrealistic.

Barca are losing money, last year they lost 83m euros. They have a debt of 532m euros. Their exec said in july the club can't continue to lose money. Especially with the new rules coming in.

Surely no club should have unlimited money in the game? That is sort of like a god mode.

[Saint_clark]

Will they be adding more financial options this year? For example say you are at a club with a loan that runs out in the year 3 billion, will you have the option to pay this loan off ahead of time if you have the money?

 

Not sure if it is just me but i like trying to get the financial side of the club right (maybe that is just the business analyst in me!). So when i see the club has a loan that will take a huge chunk out of your monthly earnings it does **** me off. Surely there should be options to pay it back quicker if your club is making a lot of money?

 

Another thing i messed about in fm11 with some of the big clubs i.e Barca. I wanted to see if i could make them bankrupt by buying players like Pullis for £50m! When it got down to £0 basically the chairman lent the club £200m......so again i go and buy some more players. Same thing happened again, chairman gave £200m to Barca.....in real life obviously that is unrealistic.

Barca are losing money, last year they lost 83m euros. They have a debt of 532m euros. Their exec said in july the club can't continue to lose money. Especially with the new rules coming in.

Surely no club should have unlimited money in the game? That is sort of like a god mode.

 

Interesting. Might give it a go.

[Matthew Le God]

Miles Jacobson's blog on transfers and contracts in FM12...

 

When I’m playing the game, I’m the archetypal “wheeler dealer” manager. Buying, selling, negotiating. Finding that young rough diamond, turning him into a world superstar, getting the best years out of him, then selling him for a tidy profit at the same time. Here’s what is in store for me this year.

 

Let’s start off with improvements to amateur contracts. And the addition of proper “non-contract” err, contracts.

 

Non-contracts are very similar to amateur contracts in many ways, in that the players are able to move freely to other clubs if they are signed on non-contract terms. However, these players can earn money with appearance fees and bonuses possible.

 

Non contracts aren’t just for players either – you can offer non-contract terms to staff too.

 

Of course, these options are only available to you should the team be likely to use them in real life, so don’t expect these options if you’re managing a top division club!

 

One thing many of the community noticed from the original announcement and screenshots from a few weeks ago was the “loyalty bonus” which has replaced the “signing on fee”. This has been changed based on feedback from both our agent and chief executive contracts, as signing on fees are now paid throughout the length of a contract, and not all upfront.

 

Another thing that was mentioned then was contract locks. These have a huge effect in the way that contract negotiations are done now, particularly when you’re on a budget!

 

Say you’ve got a limited wage budget and a maximum of 5k a week, yet the player you want is demanding 7k. Rather than getting frustrated going backwards and forwards without movement, you can lock the 5k offer, and the agent will then look at other ways to make the player happy, such as looking at some of the other bonuses available, or asking for a percentage of any sale on the player. Or they could just accept. Or walk away. But at least you all know where you stand in the negotiation.

 

There are some other tweaks to contract negotiations too, such as making it easier to withdraw or change your contract offer, including the chance to re-negotiate terms with a player after the agent has provisionally accepted, in case another club comes in for them that might be offering them more wages.

 

And you’ve also got the chance to have different minimum fee release clauses, for higher division clubs, domestic clubs and foreign clubs, as well as a new contract clause – “pay increase after x international caps”.

What about when players don’t want to be at your club anymore?

 

We’ve increased the chances that players might ask for mutual terminations, such as when a team gets relegated, or if they are near the end of their contracts and transfer listed.

 

You can also, via a conversation, issue an ultimatum to a player who hasn’t agreed a new contract with you in the last year of their contract to sign, or they’ll be put on the transfer list.

 

And also via a conversation, can tell a player why you’re transfer listing them.

 

A change with agents sees them better servicing the needs of the club – if you suggest that you’re looking for a new goalkeeper in a press conference, for example, then expect to be offered more goalkeepers from agents.

 

You also now get much better feedback in the game on why a club that was interested might not put in a bid for a player.

 

As mentioned in the blog that included the news merge, I wrote about the revamp of the transfer centre.

 

This really now has become the hub from where you sell players – rather than it just having basic information there, it now has more information by default, and by clicking on the more info button, opens up to give you the full information on the screen. It’s really easy to compare all the different offers, and you can accept, reject or negotiate, them directly from the transfer centre screen, either grouped together, or separately.

[Matthew Le God]

I prefer a boxed copy myself, but for those that want it cheaper this gives you it for under twenty quid, which isn't bad.

 

Football Manager 2012 available to pre-order as a digital download version for just £19.85...

 

http://www.shopto.net/DOWNLOAD/VIDEO%20GAMES/DWNLD27600-Football%20Manager%202012.html

Edited 19 September, 2011 by Matthew Le God

[SuperMikey]

I got FM10 as a digital download, had to enter an activation code every time I wanted to play it. Annoying.

 

I shall be buying a boxed copy.

[Matthew Le God]

Today's blog from Miles Jacobson...

 

For todays’ blog I’m going to go through a bunch of new and improved features for Football Manager 2012 that don’t fit into other categories.

 

For a start, we’ve improved the modelling of pre-defined stadium moves, meaning that when a team like Brighton have a stadium move defined in the database, the researchers of those teams are able to estimate the new attendance once the stadium move has happened, rather than it sticking to the attendance at the old ground.

 

At the start of each season, your board give you their expectations and, where possible, you can negotiate these to and get a higher transfer budget, or lower if you want less pressure. We’ve now added in some extra levels to these expectations, such as qualifying for different continental competitions – for example, you could say that you’re going to try and qualify for the Euro cup, rather than the Champions cup.

 

Football Manager 2012, as always, comes with a free data editor, which allows you to edit the games players, clubs, competitions and add new competitions. Here are some edited highlights of things added to the editor this year.

 

You can now add international competitions as well as league ones, you have the option to edit currency exchange rates, an option to add a league split in regionalised league groups, the ability to add squad rules for continental competitions, such as having to register a certain amount of players by a specific date and all the new contract clauses that were added into FM11 are now editable in the editor. As with everything in the blogs, there are more new things in the editor too, but we’ll let you find those out for yourself once the game is released on October 21st.

 

There have been a few changes in the control you have over training facilities too. For a start, if you don’t have any training facilities of your own, your board can now rent some for you. And if your club get into serious financial trouble, you might find this very useful, as you could find your board selling your owned training facilities!

 

There is also now another use for your training facilities that can help the club earn a bit more money, but only if an international tournament is going on in the country where you are managing – your board may well hire the facilities out to a nation, should they be good enough, and should your ground be near one of the stadiums being used for tournament matches.

 

A few finance changes have been made to the game this year too. Although the financial fair play rules are such big news at the moment, we’ve always made it harder in FM to get into debt than it is in real life, by limiting transfer budgets accordingly, but clubs in administration will no longer be able to get a license to play in continental competitions in the game.

 

Travelling costs to games are now better modelled, as are the cost of sending scouts out.

 

The cost of running your youth setup is also now tracked in more detail and you can ask the board to alter the level of money budgeted for your youth setup. If things look very bleak financially, the board can also ask if you want to scrap your whole youth setup if you decide not to enter your youth team into the youth league.

 

There are also some new “debt types” in the game, which are also in the new data editor, such as a debt repayable on promotion to the top division.

 

However, there are some positive financial changes too. For a start, should your players be off playing in international tournaments, your club will now get paid just as they would in real life. It’s only a small amount of money, but every little bit helps, right? And you never know – should they get injured whilst playing for the national side, you might even get some of their wages paid for the period they’re out injured for...

[Matthew Le God]

Today's blog from Miles Jacobson...

 

Let’s start with friendlies, for which there are significant additions with Football Manager 2012.

 

One thing that’s become more prevalent in football over the last season is clubs scrapping their reserve team squads due to the standard in reserve leagues not being good enough, and preferring to send players out on loan to get lower league first team football instead, and playing behind closed door friendlies instead to help get those players returning from injury fit, and giving some of the youngsters and squad players a chance to prove their worth.

 

Youth teams also now arrange pre-season friendlies too. And not just against other youth teams – you could find a big club youth team being quite happy to play a friendly against a lower league side’s first team.

In FM12, should the country you are playing in have reserve teams, and should you decide not to enter them into the reserve competitions, and should you have your assistant manager set in the team preferences to arrange friendlies, throughout the season you’ll find reserve team friendlies being added to the calendar.

Something else that’s become noticeable over the last few years has been pre-season tours where high profile clubs will go to far flung countries to have friendlies against international sides, or “best of the league” sides. And you can now arrange these in Football Manager 2012 too (should those nations have “best of the league” sides, of course).

 

We’ve also made it easier to arrange friendlies, with a better user interface to help arrange them, should you want to do this yourself.

 

Right – that’s enough about friendlies. How about a new option to help you configure your game to have the players in it you want to? There are lots of little configurable options when you first start a game of Football Manager 2012 to help get the database to a size that you’re happy with, such as being able to load up all players from a particularly nation, but this year we’ve added the option to load all players from a particular league too.

 

There aren’t too many changes to the network game this year, but you are now notified when you get chat messages from other managers and you aren’t in the chat room. And we’ve made it more obvious on how to start a network game, by adding a “start new network game” option on the main menu screen.

There are big changes with match analysis though.

 

Match analysis is something that has been in the game for a few versions now, and gives you lots of information about how you and your opposition have done in a particular match using stats to show you where passes and shots have happened from and the like. But comparing matches has always been a complicated process of going backwards and forwards between the different matches. This year, you can now analyse two matches side by side by picking the matches you want to compare, putting them into the match analysis comparison screen, and it’ll show you the difference between how your team performed in the two matches.

 

Whilst we’re talking about analysing matches, we’ve also added in some new post match stats. So after a match is finished, you can now see stats for shots, shots on target, shots off target, blocked shots, hit the woodwork, clear cut chances, half chances, other chances, long shots, possession, corners, free kicks, throw ins, fouls, offsides, passes completed, passes completed – defence, passes completed – midfield, passes completed – attack, crosses completed, tackles won, headers won, yellow cards, red cards, distance run and average rating.

 

And whilst we’re talking about stats, there's also a new subscription-based competition news item which tells you who the top performers are in various stats on a regular basis. And some new goalkeeper stats, which you can see for yourself when the demo of FM12 are released.

 

And finally for today, have you ever wanted to compare your star striker in 2040 with your star striker in 2015, only to find the player has long retired and you can’t see his stats anymore? Well, you can now set any player in the game to have their history “retained” by the game, meaning that their player history won’t ever vanish. All you need to do is click on a little tick box, and he is immortalised in the game forever – the game also chooses some key players to keep stored too.

[maddog]

Best place to pre-order the boxed copy???

[stevegrant]

I prefer a boxed copy myself, but for those that want it cheaper this gives you it for under twenty quid, which isn't bad.

 

Football Manager 2012 available to pre-order as a digital download version for just £19.85...

 

http://www.shopto.net/DOWNLOAD/VIDEO%20GAMES/DWNLD27600-Football%20Manager%202012.html

Appears that particular price isn't available anymore.

 

With the digital download option, there aren't any onerous requirements like having to be online when you fire up the game, or having to be logged into Steam or anything like that, are there? The DVD drive on my Macbook can get pretty loud, so if I can avoid using it that would be a bonus.

[Ludwig]

Appears that particular price isn't available anymore.

 

With the digital download option, there aren't any onerous requirements like having to be online when you fire up the game, or having to be logged into Steam or anything like that, are there? The DVD drive on my Macbook can get pretty loud, so if I can avoid using it that would be a bonus.

 

The game's steam-only this year, so that requirement will be there for all versions afaik.

[Colinjb]

The game's steam-only this year, so that requirement will be there for all versions afaik.

 

I don't believe it is.

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Football-Manager-2012-Mac-DVD/dp/B005HGG006/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1316693892&sr=8-1

[Ludwig]

I don't believe it is.

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Football-Manager-2012-Mac-DVD/dp/B005HGG006/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1316693892&sr=8-1

 

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/274801-A-Message-On-Football-Manager-2012-Activation

[Colinjb]

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/274801-A-Message-On-Football-Manager-2012-Activation

 

So you need to be online the first time you play the game (regardless iof it being a downloaded or hard copy) and at that moment in time the game will be registered, from there on you can play 'offline.'

 

Seems fair, although you still need steam in some form for it to work at all even if you do not utilise the service for anything else.

[Matthew Le God]

Appears that particular price isn't available anymore.

 

With the digital download option, there aren't any onerous requirements like having to be online when you fire up the game, or having to be logged into Steam or anything like that, are there? The DVD drive on my Macbook can get pretty loud, so if I can avoid using it that would be a bonus.

 

Everyone is required to activate the game with Steam this year. But after activation you don't need to be online and can play the game with Steam in offline mode. It also means you don't need the DVD in your drive and won't have that problem on your Macbook. Plus the game will automatically update with patches and data updates.

[JonnyLove]

is it available through the app store and is it Lion Compliant?

[Matthew Le God]