05.11.2004
Football Manager 2005 is a game in the Football Manager computer game series. It was developed by Sports Interactive and released on November 5, 2004, published by Sega.
On the 12th February 2004, after splitting from publishers Eidos Interactive it was announced that Sports Interactive, producers of the Championship Manager game, had acquired the brand and would henceforth release their games under the "Football Manager" name, whilst the Championship Manager series will go on, but no longer be related to Sports Interactive.
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.
Football Manager 2005 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.
Football Manager 2005 was released in the UK on November 4, 2004 - closely followed by releases in many other countries around the world - and it became the 5th fastest selling PC game of all time (according to Eurogamer). The Macintosh version of the game comes on the same dual format disk as the PC version, so its sales are also included.