FM 2009 New Features & Screens

FM09 was announced in London on September 3rd with brand-new 3D match engine for PC; PSP coming simultaneously, but no home console versions this time around.
We have prepared a mix of information regarding the long awaited new FM version including screenshots and details about the 3D game engine.

FM 2008 Success
According to developers Sports Interactive, the 2008 version sold in excess of 1 million copies having spent more than 20 weeks at the top of the UK PC games chart.

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3D Game Engine
The biggest change is a new 3D match system for the PC and Mac versions of the game. The match engine has seen more testing than ever before having been extensively beta tested in Football Manager Live for the past year. The team has worked on the engine for close to three years and was able to incorporate it into this year's version with help from Sega Japan's Virtua Striker team who provided the motion capture data and some of the animations. You can now watch your matches in 3D from multiple camera angles and re-watch any part of the match by fast forwarding and rewinding the action using a new match time bar that flags the key moments in the game. The old 2D view of the match engine is still there, especially for those people whose computers aren't powerful enough to take advantage of the 3D views.
Other new features
Other updates include the obligatory updated player and team information, wide screen support for the first time ever, the addition of press conferences, as well as lots of tweaks to the user interface for easier navigation.
Jacobson said the team has included about 100 new features in FM 2009, with 50 to 60 yet to be revealed. Football Manager is now available in 17 languages, and while the UK market still represents 45 percent to 50 percent of sales, the game's community is growing in such markets as France, Scandinavia, Spain, and Czech Republic.
While there are no new leagues included this year, due to a lack of available researchers (Football Manager currently has 1,500 researchers), Football Manager 2009 is fully updated for the new 2008/09 football season with all the latest league, club and player data, featuring over 5,000 playable clubs from over 50 countries, and around 350,000 players and staff from around the world, drawn fresh from the famous Sports Interactive database.

What about Handheld, PSP, Xbox 360 and PS3
While its big brother moves to 3D, Football Manager Handheld 2009 will see the addition of a new 2D match engine for the PSP. Fans that were holding out for a new Xbox 360 update, or indeed a PlayStation 3 debut this year, will have to wait. According to Jacobson, the team is taking "a year off from Xbox 360," citing a "crap" control system as his chief complaint.


Special Features

TV View.
Watch your matches in new full screen TV view and customise your match day screen with widgets to view the information you need as a football manager, be it player performance, match action zones, pitch radar, latest scores and many more.
Assistant Manager Feedback.
Pre-match and in-match feedback from your Assistant Manager on how the team is performing and your player's motivation levels, as well as hints on how your tactics are working and how you could outwit the opposition's tactics.
Press Conferences.
Attend pre-match and post-match press conferences with local and national journalists and build up relationships with them over time, but choose your answers carefully because they could come back to haunt you in the media at a later date.
Transfer System.
Completely new and re-written transfer system code, providing an even more realistic simulation of real-life football transfers.
Transfer Rumours.
View the latest news on what players are being speculated on, and who's said to be interested in securing their services.
Board Confidence.
Following on from its addition in Football Manager 2008, board confidence has been expanded and improved. In addition, the board will now also offer feedback on your squad harmony and your club's stature in the football world.
Preferred Moves.
Train your players to learn 'preferred moves' to add to their game. For example, train central defenders to not dive into tackles, or wingers to do step-overs before crossing the ball.
Female Manager.
For the very first time you can now play as a female manager. All of the text in the game now also has a female gender so the game represents female managers and staff in the game in the correct gender.


Screenshots



Conclusion
Sports Interactive have worked hard to reflect the greater impact the media has been having in recent years on the world of football, in the in-game dealings with the press. The game now features more news stories, more detail and greater media interaction than ever before, creating an even more realistic simulation of the football world.

Sources: FootballManager.com, GameSpot, Play.com, YouTube