Traditionally, the demo version that will be published on 2 November around 2400hrs GMT will have two “flavours” – vanilla and strawberry. The former will weigh less as there will be no player’s photos or club logos and shirts, there will be only English language available, as well as only English and Scottish leagues. The latter will feature, besides all the graphics, several language versions and 10 countries available (the list is to be published later this week). Demo in both flavours will allow, as usual, only half of a virtual year of play that could be continued after the full version release. Where will this demo be available to download from the earliest? The vanilla version will be made available for download from the News of the World website, the strawberry version will be available from three sources – the fastest way through
Steam but also via torrent or from the GameShadow website.

Let us now move on to the information particularly important for the FM-maniacs with slower computers, namely the Football Manager 2009 minimum requirements. As it was underlined by Miles Jacobson, it does not have to be that the computer not matching these specifications will not run the game. The best way is to download a demo and see for oneself – should the demo work, the full version will work as well. In the case of a substandard graphic card, should it be unable to handle 3D the match will be displayed in 2D by default.

Minimum requirements (PC)

• Windows XP / Vista
• 1.4GHz processor for XP or 2.0 GHz for Vista
• 512MB RAM for XP or 1GB RAM for Vista
• Graphic Card - 128MB Nvidia FX 5900 Ultra, ATI Radeon 9800, Intel 82915G/82910GL or better.

Minimum requirements (Mac)

• Intel Mac
• Mac OS 10.5.5
• 1GB RAM
• Graphic Card - Nvidia Geforce 7300 / ATI X1600 Radeon

Another important issue brought forth today by Miles Jacobson is the question of copy protection used in Football Manager 2009. It turns out that it will be possible to play the new version without the CD in the drive what until now was an ersatz guarantee of an original version. Now one will have to go through the process of verification after the game is installed. There will be three ways of doing so. One of them is Steam, another one – activation via the Internet (for those who do not want to install Steam; the whole process should take 30 seconds), and for those with no Internet connection there will be activation over the phone. The number will be relevant to any localisation of the game, and the whole process should take no more than 5 minutes. On top of that buying Football Manager 2009 will mean buying five licenses, so the game could be installed on five different computers.