The Second Newsletter

Dear CM User,

Firstly, apologies for the delay in sending out this newsletter. As you can imagine we are very busy on CM3 and the final version of CM2 for the 97/98 season. We want to tell you our progress on both these projects and mention our thoughts on the long term plans for the CM series - CM4 .......

We are now working on the last and much improved version of CM2 for the 97/98 season before CM3 comes out. This is planned for release at the start of next season (around September) and we plan to include the following:

We are happy to announce that EIDOS will be the publishers for CM3. We will be in control of all aspects of the game design from the initial planning through to testing and EIDOS, the publishers, will concentrate solely on the publishing side.

We have now finished work on the database for CM3 which will be coping with many more nations, teams, players, managers etc and many more ratings for each of these much more efficiently than the CM2 database and should enable us to be able to run all the planned leagues at the same time.

The planned leagues for CM3, with all the exact competition rules, are as follows: Belgium Denmark England France Germany Italy Holland Norway Portugal Scotland Spain Sweden USA (MLS)

We will be programming CM3 in a way that leagues can be added easily in the future so if your country is not included in the above list it may be done as an add-on in the future.

We have now chosen our main researchers for the above leagues who have now started compiling the data. We will now start selecting researchers from other regions around the world and will be contacting some of you in the near future. Thanks once again to all of you who expressed an interest in being involved in the making of CM3.

We are unable at present to disclose too much about the intended features for CM3 but the following outlines what we are planning in more detail:

General: All areas of the game are to be improved. We will be having a huge database (many times bigger than in CM2) of players, team staff, teams, managers and officials from all around the world with many more ratings and hidden ratings to make the game even more realistic. We will of course be improving greatly on the CM2 game engine

The game will be configurable so you can choose the number of leagues you want to run which will mean less powerful machines can run CM3.

Tactics: These will be much more detailed and in depth then in CM2. You will be able to give players individual instructions from runs to make to the marking of a particular player. There will be many pre-set formations and individual player tactics for those who do not want to get so involved.

Training: You will be able to assign different coaches (depending, of course, on your financial resources) to different areas of training. These areas of training will include, Youth Squad, Goalkeeping, Fitness, Formation, Technique etc. Coaches will give you reports on players progress during training sessions.

Scouts: You will be able to send specific named scouts to watch specific players or matches or to scout a specific country or region. They will report back to you with their findings.

User Interface: This will be similar to CM2 but will be much improved so it is more intuitive and easier to use and we will make use of higher resolution, short cut keys, and many more relevant background pictures from all around the world. We hope to have some screen shots available in the near future.

Media: Newspaper reports and rumour of possible happenings in the world of football. We hope to make this configurable so that you can choose to get the information most relevant to you.

Please note that an assistant manager will be available to take away some of your management tasks if you feel you have too much work to do.

Thanks to all of you who sent us suggestions for CM3. We have considered them all and we intend to include many of them as well as a some of our own which we do not want to disclose to you just yet...

Our long term plan is to bring Championship Manager on-line. How would you like to see it work - any suggestions are welcome.

Once again, thank you for your continued support and your interest in what we are doing. We will endeavour to send out newsletters on a more regular basis in the future to keep you up to date on our progress.

P.S. As always, we will read all emails we receive and will try and respond to all emails personally but due to the large amount we receive each day this may not always be possible. We will try and cover any commonly asked questions in our future newsletters.

P.P.S. Please note we have now included a "New to Website" page at our website which will make it easier for you to see what has been added since the last time you looked. This page has the following URL address: