Interviews// Sports Interactive's, Miles Jacobson on Football Manager 2007, Sega, Baseball and Ice Hockey
Handheld management games, American Sports and worldwide plans
So what's it like being a Sega employee?
It's exactly the same as not being a Sega employee and being published by them. Absolutely nothing is being changed at the studio, and Sega is down with us. You know how happy we have been working with Sega for the last four years. We were well up for extending the deal, and they turned round and went: Well, how about you become part of the family? The benefits for us are plentiful. For a start there's less legal and business affairs stuff for us to do, which is really nice. So we get to be more creative. We also get to share technology with all the other Sega studios. It's not a case of the studios being pitted against each other, as there are at some other companies I get on well with the Creative Assembly guys, for example. I'm looking forward to sitting down with the Secret Level guys, and I'm going over to Tokyo the week after next.
We've got some great AI technology and font technology that people can use. Obviously, other people are more graphically advanced than we are, so we're going to look at making the game a bit prettier, so people can't say it's a bloody spreadsheet any more. But it's not just the technology. If you've got hundreds of people who work on multiple platforms, if we get stuck doing something, we can send an email round to all the dev-studios.
What was the experience of doing a PSP version of Football Manager like?
It had three weeks at number one in the UK it's selling better than we were expecting. It has reviewed between 8 and 8.5/10, which I think is right I don't think it's a 9/10 game yet. We're very happy with it for the first version, but we will make sure that the second one is a 9/10. As a dev studio, we've learned a lot from doing the PSP and Xbox 360 versions we've learned that we can do games that aren't just PC-based.
What are your plans for the North American market?
Well, we've got our baseball game coming, Out of the Park Baseball 2006, at the end of May, which is digital download only it will be our first digital download release. We will then have a new ice hockey game before the end of the year which, again, is likely to be digital download only.
What's the thinking behind that?
It's quite simple, really; retail in America wants blockbusters. The US market hasn't had games like this before, and it isn't used to them yet. We're not going to be coming out and doing half a million in the first weekend, and we'd be stupid to think we would. In five years time, maybe we will, but we need to build it up slowly, like we have done in Europe. If we go to retail now, we might ship 30 to 40,000 copies; if we then get 20,000 back because someone has tried to sell an ice hockey game in Los Angeles, it's insane. Therefore, we want to build up the fan-base first, and when we're at the point at which we can do a proper retail release, we'll do it.
We've got some interesting stuff in Europe with those games. We'e been talking to a TV channel that shows a lot of American sports, because there are people in Europe who love those sports as well. If you'd asked me two years ago, I would have answered that by this time, I wanted to be having number one games in America. But it's going to take longer than that, and we're building a five year plan with Sega of America and Worldwide Soccer Manager is a big part of that plan as well.
It's exactly the same as not being a Sega employee and being published by them. Absolutely nothing is being changed at the studio, and Sega is down with us. You know how happy we have been working with Sega for the last four years. We were well up for extending the deal, and they turned round and went: Well, how about you become part of the family? The benefits for us are plentiful. For a start there's less legal and business affairs stuff for us to do, which is really nice. So we get to be more creative. We also get to share technology with all the other Sega studios. It's not a case of the studios being pitted against each other, as there are at some other companies I get on well with the Creative Assembly guys, for example. I'm looking forward to sitting down with the Secret Level guys, and I'm going over to Tokyo the week after next.
We've got some great AI technology and font technology that people can use. Obviously, other people are more graphically advanced than we are, so we're going to look at making the game a bit prettier, so people can't say it's a bloody spreadsheet any more. But it's not just the technology. If you've got hundreds of people who work on multiple platforms, if we get stuck doing something, we can send an email round to all the dev-studios.
What was the experience of doing a PSP version of Football Manager like?
It had three weeks at number one in the UK it's selling better than we were expecting. It has reviewed between 8 and 8.5/10, which I think is right I don't think it's a 9/10 game yet. We're very happy with it for the first version, but we will make sure that the second one is a 9/10. As a dev studio, we've learned a lot from doing the PSP and Xbox 360 versions we've learned that we can do games that aren't just PC-based.
What are your plans for the North American market?
Well, we've got our baseball game coming, Out of the Park Baseball 2006, at the end of May, which is digital download only it will be our first digital download release. We will then have a new ice hockey game before the end of the year which, again, is likely to be digital download only.
What's the thinking behind that?
It's quite simple, really; retail in America wants blockbusters. The US market hasn't had games like this before, and it isn't used to them yet. We're not going to be coming out and doing half a million in the first weekend, and we'd be stupid to think we would. In five years time, maybe we will, but we need to build it up slowly, like we have done in Europe. If we go to retail now, we might ship 30 to 40,000 copies; if we then get 20,000 back because someone has tried to sell an ice hockey game in Los Angeles, it's insane. Therefore, we want to build up the fan-base first, and when we're at the point at which we can do a proper retail release, we'll do it.
We've got some interesting stuff in Europe with those games. We'e been talking to a TV channel that shows a lot of American sports, because there are people in Europe who love those sports as well. If you'd asked me two years ago, I would have answered that by this time, I wanted to be having number one games in America. But it's going to take longer than that, and we're building a five year plan with Sega of America and Worldwide Soccer Manager is a big part of that plan as well.
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Comments
JRLJ 2 Jun 2006 19:46
1/1
Shame you didn't quiz them about a DS version of football manager. The DS would be perfect for it although it might lack the horsepower to have a huge database, I don't know. CM 97/98 interface with up-to-date stats would do nicely for me.