Championship Manager 5

Did You Know?

• A scaled-down version of Championship Manager 5 was released on Xbox and PlayStation 2 in March 2005 along with a PlayStation Portable version simply called Championship Manager.
• All three console versions were developed by Gusto Games.
• The console versions contain many of the same bugs and data errors as the PC version.

Early difficulties

Originally slated for an October 2004 launch, Championship Manager 5 was delayed until March 2005 because the developers had to code the entire game from scratch. This setback gave its new competitor, Sports Interactive's Football Manager 2005, a head start to build a following before CM5 hit shelves. A planned Mac version was also scrapped before release, handing further advantage to Football Manager, which shipped on a dual-format CD-ROM for both Mac and Windows.

When it finally arrived, the game was plagued by an unusually large number of bugs. Even a downloadable patch released on day one did not stop many players from finding it unplayable. Major problems included a broken transfer system and a match engine that felt very unrealistic. Perhaps the most damaging flaw was the unreliable player database.

In earlier games, this database was a fan-created strength, but Beautiful Game Studios hired a professional firm to build most of it, and that firm apparently failed despite the in-house team's best efforts. Other missing features soon emerged, such as the promised hotseat multiplayer mode and basic player histories. Two patches were later released that made significant improvements.