14 DAY TRIAL // Video game developer Sports Interactive and ProzoneSports announce that they are entering a partnership that will allow a number of top clubs around the world to use player information created for Football Manager 2015 and the rest of the series to conduct their long-term scouting and recruitment drives.
The two companies are saying that the virtual information is important because it has been collected and refined over more than two decades and allows teams to quickly evaluate players that might be hard to watch via more traditional means.
All the data will be now included in the Prozone Recruiter, which gives top clubs a simple and online way to analyze information and to compare players before they begin a recruitment drive.
Miles Jacobson, the director of the Sports Interactive studio, is quoted by the official announcement as saying that “For years we’ve heard stories of real-life managers and scouts using our data to help with the recruitment process. From now on, it’s official…real managers around the world will be finding and comparing players using data and a search system that will be very familiar to players of Football Manager.”
The studio has created a network of scouts that is more than 1,300 strong and that allows the Football Manager series to easily simulate players that many gamers or even professional managers have not yet heard of.
Thomas Schmider, the chief executive officer of Prozone, adds, “Prozone Recruiter has been built to supplement the intuition of scouts and coaches by delivering detailed performance information on over 80,000 players worldwide. It’s not a one-size-fits-all solution, instead it’s been designed to empower clubs to tailor its functionality to suit their own unique recruitment requirements.”
The databse from Sports interactive is by no means perfect but it gives clubs a solid foundation on which to launch their own long-term scouting and recruitment drives, which might mean that soon fans of virtual football might see some of their favorites playing for bigger teams.
Football Manager 2015 will be launched in November of this year, probably once again on the PC and the PlayStation Vita handheld from Sony.
Sports Interactive says that it plans to deliver more information about the core features in October.
Previously, the studio suggested that it would upgrade the core elements of the simulation engine while putting more emphasis on the way gamers can interact with their players and their staff in order to improve their long-term performance.