Memory, not control, biggest issue in format change

Sports Interactive studio head Miles Jacobson says that the biggest issue bringing Football Manager to consoles had to do with the amount of memory rather than the lack of a keyboard and mouse.

"...This year for the first time the game doesn't require a hard drive to play, so that was a massive challenge in itself because we're used to using the hard drive as virtual memory and temp storage on the PC and Mac titles," Jacobson told GamesIndustry.biz.

Beating that challenge has had great benefits for the company's other products, for the future PC and Mac side of things, he said.

"The learning about technology that's been done by the console team in the past few months bodes very well for our other titles as well."

Jacobson notes that the additional user base of the Arcade Xbox 360 SKU gives them more possibilities to sell the title - and recognises that the company hasn't really marketed its games beyond the core market of students and football fans.

"You would think that people who are buying the Arcade SKU were the more mass-market consumers, and that's an audience that with the next-generation consoles I don't really think we've hit yet," he said

"There are titles out there, ours included, that do also appeal to a much wider demographic than people maybe realise."

The complete interview with Miles Jacobson can be read here.