Ever since the early '90s, Sports Interactive has been making football management games. Originally branding its series Championship Manager until a split from publisher Eidos a few years ago, it has since been bought by Sega and has renamed its game Football Manager.
Annual iterations of that title have been successful, and now Sports Interactive has unveiled a new game, based on the FM franchise but with a slightly different focus. Football Manager Live will be a massively multiplayer online game, pitting up to 1,000 armchair managers against each other at a time.
Players will make up their own team, choose the name and kit, and bid for virtual versions of real-life stars against other managers. Competitions are mostly player-generated, and each gameworld (server) will have its own global leaderboard.
No payment model has yet been announced for the game, which won't be released until March 2008, although it's due to move into the beta phase of testing in May 2007. For more information, check out our early preview of Football Manager Live.