Tablet tech in two years as powerful as PC tech last year

Tablet technology in two years will be as powerful as PC tech was last year, Football Manager boss Miles Jacobson believes.

He told Eurogamer his plans for Football Manager depend on it.

"I reckon that within two years, tablet technology will be the same as PC was three years before it," Jacobson prophesied.

"So the way that things are going at the moment - I reckon quad core processors are going to hit next year; I think RAM will go up next year; and then what will be interesting is going to be clock speeds that they're going to get out of those the year after.

"All of this is guess work in my part," he admitted. "I don't know this stuff. But we are trying to plan for the future, and with the success that we've had with the iPhone and iPad game so far, and with the new one now, it's something that's very important for us moving forward.

"We want to be on more platforms, we want to be on more operating systems and we want to be delivering not just the best football management experience on the platform, but we want to be delivering the best game on the platform, which is quite a big target to have."

Jacobson said he sits there "every night" and thinks, "Wow I hope I'm planning this properly, because otherwise we could be sitting there with a game that will only be good in 10 years time!"

Specifically, what he's planning is a tablet Football Manager game that's different to the pillar PC and Mac FM game, and different to the snack-sized iPhone game.

"There could be multiple separate mobile games," Jacobson said. "We're trying to entertain as many people as possible with our titles.

"I sit there every night and go, 'Wow I hope I'm planning this properly, because otherwise we could be sitting there with a game that will only be good in 10 years time.'"

Miles Jacobson, studio director, Sports Interactive

"We know that some people don't have as much time as others. And we know that there's a wide variety of people that have played our game in the past that have dropped out, or want to play our games but are too scared to. We want to be able to entertain all of those people with what we're doing. And if that means changing our mindset a little bit then that's fine.

"But," he added, "we don't want to take away from the people who are already enjoying Football Manager Handheld and who are already enjoying Football Manager. We want to keep those going with the same brand values, if you like."

The Steam anti-piracy measures Sega and Sports Interactive took with Football Manager 12 resulted in more money than usual from game sales. This is being reinvested and means Sports Interactive can cast the FM net wider than PC, to iPhone and to tablets and beyond.

An exciting benefit of these smaller projects is that Sports Interactive can cheaply trial Football Manager feature ideas.

"One of the beauties of us being a multi-platform studio now is we get to experiment. So [Challenge mode] is something that, if it works well in the iPhone game, then we may well look at bringing it across to our other titles in the future as well."

Eurogamer has just published a multi-review of Football Manager 2012 on PC, Football Manager Handheld 2012 on PSP and Football Manager Handheld 2012 on iOS.