''Championship Manager 5'' is the fifth installment of the popular '' Championship Manager'' of

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...

management

simulation video game Simulation video games are a diverse super-category of video games, generally designed to closely simulate real world activities. A simulation game attempts to copy various activities from real life in the form of a game for various purposes such ...

s. It is the first game in the series to be developed by Beautiful Game Studios after the much publicised split between

Eidos Interactive Eidos Interactive Limited (formerly Domark Limited) was a British video game publisher based in Wimbledon, London. Among its franchises were '' Championship Manager'', '' Deus Ex'', ''Hitman'', '' Thief'' and ''Tomb Raider''. Domark was founded ...

and

Sports Interactive Sports Interactive Limited is a British video game developer based in London, best known for the ''Football Manager'' series. Founded by brothers Collyer brothers (game designers), Oliver and Paul Collyer in July 1994, the studio was acquired in ...

Early difficulties

The game was originally due for release in October 2004; however, the release date slipped to March 2005 due to difficulties in coding the game from scratch. This allowed new rival, Sports Interactive's ''Football Manager 2005'', a clear run to establish itself ahead of the release of ''Championship Manager 5''. A release on the

Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...

platform was cancelled prior to release, again giving headway to its rival ''

Football Manager ''Football Manager'', also known as ''Worldwide Soccer Manager'' in North America from 2004 to 2008, is a series of football management simulation video games developed by British developer Sports Interactive and published by Sega. The game beg ...

'', which was made available for Mac as standard on a dual format CD-ROM (with the PC Windows version). Upon its release, the game contained an unusually high number of bugs. Even though Beautiful Game Studios published a downloadable patch on the day of release, many users felt that ''Championship Manager 5'' was unplayable. Key problems included difficulties transferring players (either in or out of a club) and a very unrealistic match engine. Perhaps one of the biggest issues discovered by people purchasing ''Championship Manager 5'' was the fact that the player database was not particularly reliable. The database had been made "for the fans by the fans" in previous games and was probably the biggest strength of the ''Championship Manager'' brand. Beautiful Game Studios had employed a professional firm to create much of the player database and they had apparently failed despite the best efforts of the in-house research team. Other issues arose shortly after CM5 was released. Features like hotseat multiplayer games, which had been confirmed as being included in the game, disappointed some by their absence when the game arrived. Other small things such as player histories were also missing from the final product. Two patches are available that contain significant improvements to the game.

Console versions

A scaled-down version of ''Championship Manager 5'' was released on

Xbox Xbox is a video gaming brand that consists of four main home video game console lines, as well as application software, applications (games), the streaming media, streaming service Xbox Cloud Gaming, and online services such as the Xbox networ ...

and

PlayStation 2 The PlayStation 2 (PS2) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment. It was first released in Japan on 4 March 2000, in North America on 26 October, in Europe on 24 Novembe ...

in March 2005 along with a

PlayStation Portable The PlayStation Portable (PSP) is a handheld game console developed and marketed by Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment. It was first released in Japan on December 12, 2004, in North America on March 24, 2005, and in PA ...

version, simply called '' Championship Manager''. These are known to contain many of the same bugs and data errors as the PC version. All three console versions were developed by Gusto Games.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Championship Manager 05 2005 video games Association football management video games Beautiful Game Studios games Championship Manager Eidos Interactive games Gusto Games games PlayStation 2 games Single-player video games Video game sequels Video games developed in the United Kingdom Windows games Xbox games

Early difficulties

Console versions

See also

References

External links