Football Manager 2006

Yes.

The club will pay out compensation, yes, but as it's only virtual, it shouldn't really change your mind on other jobs. While we might keep records of how much you've earned, you don't have any living expenses in the game, and can't spend the money on anything, so it would be pointless accepting a job that you don't want, or turning one down that you do.

You can either direct it at the whole team or single out specific players. It will have an effect on the player's morale, which can certainly affect a result, and the different player's personalities will determine how the team talk changes their morale or form.

It's not micromanagement at all - it's an important part of being a football manager. And seeing as the game is called "Football Manager", that makes it a part of the game! It will be multiple choice, like the other media involvement, yes.

No, not just on that. You can choose to set the training manually as well, but that's also a lot more simplified, whilst still being accurate. It is made easier by you being able to tell the coaches what you want them concentrating on either for a schedule, a squad or an individual player, and they will set the training plan accordingly.

Having the press against you was a feature that could quite easily happen in FM2005, so it can happen in 2006 as well. It's not normally a specific journal, but the press in general, and you can get hounded in the same way that players do. It just doesn't happen very often, and you normally get sacked pretty quick after it starts!

We are hoping we can base them on real refs, but we're not 100 per cent sure yet.

It's not really a hand holding exercise; it's a way to know where your players can play on the pitch. You can still play them wherever you want to, or even train them to be able to play in different positions, but there is little point having a player who is marked as a D/DM/L/C who can actually only play left back or defensive midfield. He might be 5 foot 6 inches, and you have him playing as a central defender looking at his display, so we've given people the opportunity to know that he can't play there.

When are you going to make Eurogamer fully 3D? You could have 3D projected text, you and Mugs in our living rooms, virtually playing the games in front of us. Think of all the possibilities. [When we suggested later that he might mean that 3D is a nice idea, but it's hard enough to do 2D effectively, Miles responded affirmatively.]

The PSP gave us the chance to do it - to have a handheld that powerful is great.

We'll look at all platforms, but I think that the PS2 and the PSP should be giving quite different experiences really - if we were to do a game on a console, we'd want it to be the full PC gaming experience, as people are more likely to sit in front of their TVs playing a game for hours than they are on the PSP. With the PSP, we've approached from a different angle, and tried to make a game that keeps the depth of gameplay and the immersion of our games, but is more of a handheld experience. Oh, and the PSP has around 8 times the amount of usable memory for us compared to the PS2, which certainly helps us develop the game.

We've announced "at least six leagues" because we're not entirely sure yet. It depends a lot on when we finish the actual gameplay code and how much time we have left to implement more leagues.

Blimey. As I said earlier, we've approached from a different angle, so I don't think it's fair to compare. I expect the lazy journalist would say that it's around the "3" series kind of complexity, but it goes a lot deeper than that.

That's certainly the idea. We haven't tested it out as a UMD yet as that comes much later in the process, so any loading time figures would be guesses at the moment!

That would be lovely, wouldn't it?

I don't actually have full tech specs for the DS, but I would expect that if it was possible, one of the Ninty fanboys in the office would have smashed down my door by now, and no one has. So we'll stick to the PSP.