Football Manager 2005
Football Manager 2005, known as Worldwide Soccer Manager 2005 in North America, is a football management simulation video game for PC Windows and Mac developed by Sports Interactive and published by Sega. It is the inaugural entry in the new "Football Manager" series, and was succeeded by "Football Manager 2006". Commonly known as "FM 2005", it competed directly with "Championship Manager 5", the severely delayed and widely slated effort from Eidos-funded Beautiful Game Studios. It became the fifth fastest-selling PC game of all time at the time according to Chart-Track as well as the  fastest selling game from Sega Europe at the time. The Macintosh version of the game came on the same dual format disk as the Windows version, so its sales were also included. This was the first game from Sports Interactive that was published in North America. Development. Tensions grew between Sports Interactive and their publisher Eidos Interactive during the troubled development of Championship Manager 4. SI feared that they were about to be replaced, so they prepared for a split. Later it would turn out to be a misunderstanding. SI did redeem themselves with the season update Championship Manager 03/04 , where they got things to what they wanted CM4 to be, but the mutual decision to separate had already been announced before the release of CM4. On 12 February 2004, after splitting from publishers Eidos Interactive, it was announced that Sports Interactive, producers of the "Championship Manager" games, had acquired the "Football Manager" brand and would henceforth release their games under that name, whilst the Championship Manager series would go on, but no longer be related to Sports Interactive. Sports Interactive retained the rights to the code and all data from Championship Manager up until the season update 03/04 and  based Football Manager 2005 on that. Gameplay. "Football Manager 2005" compared to the previous managing game from Sports Interactive, Championship Manager 03/04, included an updated user interface, a refined game engine, updated database and competition rules, pre- and post-match information, international player news, cup summary news, 2D clips from agents, coach reports on squads, job centre for non-playing positions, mutual contract termination, enhanced player loan options, manager "mind games" and various other features. Copyright issues. Due to various copyright disputes and restrictions certain alterations had to be made to the game data which took away some of the  famous realism known from Sports Interactive and their previous football manager simulation Championship Manager. Noticeable changes included the following: However, due to the way these data changes have been made (using simple instructions in plain-text files called EDT files and LNC files) almost all of the above changes could be easily reversed – many of them by simply deleting the appropriate file. Chinese controversy. "Football Manager 2005" was banned in China when it was found that places such as Tibet and Taiwan were included as separate countries in imported releases. China banned the game because it felt that it "threatened  its content harmful to China's sovereignty and territorial integrity ... [that] seriously violates Chinese law and has been strongly protested by our nation's gamers". SEGA published a statement in reply, reporting that a Chinese version of the game, complete with Taiwan included as part of China, would be released. They also stated that the offending version was not translated into Chinese as it was not supposed to be released in China. The offending games were believed to have been imported or downloaded, written to CD and boxed to be sold in illegal software shops in China. Reception. "Football Manager  2005" has received favourable reviews from critics. Both GameRankings and Metacritic aggregators rate it at 89 out of 100. Eurogamer's Kristian Reed called it "a beautiful game of the beautiful game" and gave it a 9 out of 10. GameSpot's Brett Todd deemed it "every bit as thorough and addictive as its predecessors", giving it 8.6 out of 10, and remarked that this is the first time a game from Sports Interactive is being published in North America. Swedish Gamereactor called it "the real Championship Manager 5, albeit with a different name" and "the absolute pinnacle of the  genre" giving it 9 out of 10. The Danish and Norwegian Gamereactor were a little less favourable, giving it a 7 and an 8 respectively. Swedish FZ author "xplejjn" liked the fact that real-world local news like Expressen, Svenskafans.com and Fotbolldirekt.com were in the game and added to the realism. It received a "Platinum" sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA), indicating sales of at least 300,000 copies in the United Kingdom. It also won the Sunday Times Reader Award for Games at the 2005 Bafta Game awards.