A question about US market, sales and SI's attention to US-based FManiacs

So.

I recently have seen some sale numbers (not by SI since they don't disclose them I believe), where SEGA said FM2011 sold around 5.9 million copies in Europe in the first nine months, and 5.77 in the US. Which basically means that the US is as big of a market, if not bigger (because of its huge potential, growing Hispanic population, growing soccer interest) than Europe. I am a Spaniard living in the US and I get to see this everyday.

Having said that--how come the US gets such little attention from SI? No Quickstars for the MLS in the demos? If someone wants a physical copy of the game, they either buy it from the UK, or have no chance. the UK and other European countries (like Spain) run promotions, constest and such through media, website, etc giving away free videogames and basically promoting each edition...but we get very little love here in the US. Major League Soccer (albeit so much better than previous editions thanks to the Americans who have helped) is still ridden with bugs and misconceptions.

Why is this?

Disclaimer--this is a reasonable inquiry, and one that has been made politely. I hope the conversation will follow the same way, and that SI will be able to address the question that, I am sure, several of us in the US ask every year.

T24

While I can't answer why there is no MLS start-up. If you want a physical copy you can order it online from places like Amazon.

Amazon doesn't sell current version anymore--at least this is what has been happening in the past several editions: available only through Steam and eventually, after months and months, the current version is available, which makes less sense than not having it at all.

Fair point about no MLS in the quickstart. It's quite an enjoyable league for us europeans to manage in due to it's many restrictions and variations from our football leagues, and due to it's regular fine-tuning and improvements it should be included in the quickstart so players can check out the most recent version. About boxed copies; I thought downloaded copies of games were a lot more popular in the USA but I'm probably wrong since I don't live there...

They are more popular...because we don't have any other option lol

Sorry to hear about Amazon must be to do with the USA but its available over here.

Just checked now it looks like you can order it through GAME.co.uk to be delivered to the US don't know how much it will cost though.

But that's my point--we account for around 30-40% of the market, with a purchasing power equal--if not higher--than Europe...but we have to order from the UK and wait for 1-2 weeks? Mkay.

I can see your point.

Your stats sound way out to me. Europe is nearly three times the size of the US (in population terms) and football is the most popular sport in most countries here. Additionally, if it is such an inconvience to buy the game in the US, why are so many copies sold?

I do agree with your general point though, it would be good to see FM in shops in the US again.

The management sim has now sold 690,000 units in Europe and the US across PSP and PC.

Read it again:) the figures you quoted were for ALL Sega games across all platforms.

i was going to say, there is no way 11 million copies of FM were sold last year!

Well, this is what happens when SI won't release any numbers. Are you telling me that the US doesn't account for at least 20% of the FM market?

I don't know. I guess it doesn't matter. All companies in the world are looking at the US as a huge potential market for soccer and here we are, not able to buy a videogame on freaking Amazon, where you can buy anything you can think of.

Oh well.

I would be very suprised if the US made up 20% of FM sales each year.

That article was before the final patch so it will have gone up considerably after that, but not 10M copies, sadly:(

That article was before the final patch so it will have gone up considerably after that, but not 10M copies, sadly:(

Miles wouldnt be looking so rough in the videos if they sold 10m copies last year!

Well, this is what happens when SI won't release any numbers. Are you telling me that the US doesn't account for at least 20% of the FM market?

I don't know. I guess it doesn't matter. All companies in the world are looking at the US as a huge potential market for soccer and here we are, not able to buy a videogame on freaking Amazon, where you can buy anything you can think of.

Oh well.

It'll be because Sega US is a different entity to Sega Europe and doesn't actually market FM.

You'd certainly think they would do given the rise of football in the US and of course it's popularity in other countires in the region they cover.

I can't really speak for Americans since i.m English, but i have always got the impression that the majority of Americans follow American Football and not soccer as they call it, Isn't Baseball even more popular than Footy is over in the states? Europe as a whole is much larger than America in terms of population and football is our most popular sport. Still, even if they only sold half of what they sell in Europe you would think American shops would sell a boxed version of the game.

Miles wouldnt be looking so rough in the videos if they sold 10m copies last year!

I disagree, his share would buy a vodka distillery:lol:

Twellman, I've asked the marketing guy for FM if he can expand on this, so keep an eye on this thread.

I can't really speak for Americans since i.m English, but i have always got the impression that the majority of Americans follow American Football and not soccer as they call it, Isn't Baseball even more popular than Footy is over in the states? Europe as a whole is much larger than America in terms of population and football is our most popular sport. Still, even if they only sold half of what they sell in Europe you would think American shops would sell a boxed version of the game.

Doesn't matter though, TG--Here's why:

Let's say the entirety of Spain, where FM is marketed heavily and where they have several options for purchase, follows soccer. That's 50 million people.

Let's also say, that just like in Europe, the most followed sport in Central and Latin America is soccer (obviously true).

Now, let's look at this:

Let's say that not a single White American in the US watches soccer. Not true, but for the sake of the argument.

Let's say that only Hispanics and Europeans living in the US watch soccer. Now, take these figures from the US Census Bureau:

So basically, the Hispanic population in the US is roughly that of the population of Spain--which means the market is already there. If you add the Americans who do watch soccer int he US and potentially could buy the game, you have a bigger market than Spain--and growing. And if you keep looking at the chart, the piece of the pie only gets bigger and bigger through the years.

But we did forget something: Europeans living in the US. As of 2003 (again Census Bureau), 13% of all immigrants in the US were European, while Central and Latin Americans accounted for 45% of all immigrants. If we take that into account, the 40-something million Hispanics in the US in 2003 meant that around 12-13 million Europeans lived in the US, too. So we add that to the almost 50 million Hispanics living in the US as of 2010.

50+13 = 63 million Hispanics and Europeans living in the US. And I haven't even taken into account the growth of Europeans living in the US from 2003 to 2011. Now the Americans who do watch soccer.

So the market for potential soccer watchers--and players in the US is bigger, in terms of population, than the markets of the UK, Italy, or Spain.

Edit: Thanks Kriss!

Bigger than the U.K,Spain,Italy,France yes, but Europe as a whole? I would say no. Still, like i said earlier i think they should sell local hard copies of the game, i am sure there are plenty of people like me who prefer a hard copy to a digital download.

I'm not asking for an promotional campaign in all 50 states. I am asking about living in Chicago (like I ldo) and being able to buy the game in a store--Chicago, New York, LA...the works, that's all.

It all comes down to distribution cost to get the game out there but then you need stores willing to stock the game, whilst football in the USA is becoming more popular with every year passing if business' don't think it will sell compared to other sport games then they may decided against buying the game from SI to store it.

I can't really speak for Americans since i.m English, but i have always got the impression that the majority of Americans follow American Football and not soccer as they call it, Isn't Baseball even more popular than Footy is over in the states? Europe as a whole is much larger than America in terms of population and football is our most popular sport. Still, even if they only sold half of what they sell in Europe you would think American shops would sell a boxed version of the game.

Not many people follow it here. I love football and can't stand "handegg." I honestly haven't met one person in the USA who actually likes the sport, in real life that is.

Not many people follow it here. I love football and can't stand "handegg." I honestly haven't met one person in the USA who actually likes the sport, in real life that is.

I beg to differ. I lived in Oklahoma for four years before moving to Chicago. Oklahoma is even more rural than Texas--I found dozens of people with whom I watched games every week. Americans, Europeans, Hispanics. And this was in Oklahoma, not even a major city.

I beg to differ. I lived in Oklahoma for four years before moving to Chicago. Oklahoma is even more rural than Texas--I found dozens of people with whom I watched games every week. Americans, Europeans, Hispanics. And this was in Oklahoma, not even a major city.

Haha, honestly haven't seen any of that. I'm from Arizona and I regularly vacation to NYC.

Yeah dude, I lived in the middle of nowhere, but when the big games came on (Champions' final, world cup, spanish league, etc) I would meet tons of people at sports bars where they'd play the games on ESPN2!

I beg to differ. I lived in Oklahoma for four years before moving to Chicago. Oklahoma is even more rural than Texas--I found dozens of people with whom I watched games every week. Americans, Europeans, Hispanics. And this was in Oklahoma, not even a major city.

I was living in Montana during the '06 World Cup, and my regular sports bar was packed for USA-Czech Republic. Was a 10 am start, IIRC, so a lot of people would have been skipping out of work.

Now I'm living in South Dakota. I caught USA-Ghana in a bar during the '10 World Cup, and there were a good 80 to 100 people at least watching. I was one of the oldest people in there (and I was only 36 at the time).

Wow, I was wondering this same question this whole week.

I've been trying to search Amazon.com everyday to see if they were going to eventually sell it but to no luck(so far). And to top it off I'm currently stationed in Hawaii so its even harder to get a box copy here. I asked Gamestop if they were going to sell it and, LOL, they havent even heard of the game before.

Before I moved to Hawaii I lived in North Texas and they're are a lot of footy fans there not rabib fans like me but they watched a lot of games that was shown on tv. But honestly, why arent the box games sold here in the states Sega?:confused:

I know. I don't even know how many times I've asked Gamestop about the game, and they don't even KNOW the damn thing. For a SEGA product to not even be in the database of the main retailer of videogames in-store...it's just surreal. I can probably order the most obscure, weird videogame ever via Gamestop, but I can't ask for a game that sells dozens of thousands of copies in this country every day, about the sport most widely played in the world (and the most widely played in the US youth).

Hello,

So - you probably won't like some of the answers, based on trying to explain this before - but they are based on my experience of working on FM since it became FM....

It's actually a pretty self-fulfilling problem that we face. Retailers in the USA don't much like PC product - their focus is largely on console and they give most of their space in store to that. More significantly, they have never taken to the idea of a sports management game based on soccer (or, in honesty, any sports management game).

As a result, it's been extremely difficult to convince any retailers to take the product for a consistent period. Amazon did, for a while, but none of the key chains were interested. With no retail placement, it's hard to drive up forecasts, place stock, and invest in marketing. Amazon didn't see any growth in sales over a few years - for several reasons, some of which were more our responsibility from theirs, admittedly.

So - we're really happy that Steam gives us an opportunity to really test the interest in the US market. I think the results, if I recall correctly from last year, were pretty impressive and if we can generate some natural growth in the USA via that channel, it's a good opportunity to indicate to retail that they're missing a bit of a trick.

Cheers

Matt

I live in the USA and I think the biggest thing as Matt said is selling PC games in stores. I went to Target recently and the PC game section is one shelf by the books and CDs. It is the same way at the local Gamestop, Walmart, etc. Also the game is called Football Manager regardless of the country it is selling in and I don't think a game called Football Manager that is really soccer will sell well in the USA.

2008 and 2009 I bought the game from Amazon.com but now the Amazon.com release date seems to differ a lot from the Steam release date. I don't have a problem buying the game off Steam. In fact I've bought quite a few PC games from Steam as it allows me to play it right away rather than waiting for it to ship from Amazon or another website. PC games just aren't that popular IMO now that we have next-gen gaming systems like the 360 and PS3 unless its something like The Sims.

I'm a Brit living in the US and unfortunately footballfan08 is right. The selection of PC games in retail stores is patchy at best.

The good news is that 'soccer' is indeed on the up over here. The fact that the US women's team got to the world cup final (lost on penalties - welcome to international football girls!) and coupled with the US men's team doing well in the WC, and beating Spain to eventually lose in the final of the Confederate's cup) has really sparked an interest over here. The pubs were packed out.

As for interest in FM, I personally don't know anyone over here who plays as they're into handegg but I know plenty of people who follow the Premiership on Fox.

Retail sales of PC games over here is indeed pathetic but I wonder what your thoughts are on selling the console versions over here Matt?

As for interest in FM, I personally don't know anyone over here who plays as they're into handegg but I know plenty of people who follow the Premiership on Fox.

Quite a few Americans are trying to play FM now (including yours truly), but with limited success, because the game is so US-unfriendly. No quick-start for MLS is a gaping hole. The data accuracy for MLS clubs and stadiums is, with all due respect, abysmally poor. My home club is Seattle Sounders FC, and they've got it almost completely wrong (even the stadium opening is off by five years!). And for those outside the US who keep insisting there is no commercial support for world football in the US, there is a reason Sounders FC jerseys all have the Xbox 360 logo boldly splashed across their chests. I bought FM11 on Steam and quickly put it aside because it was basically impossible for me to do what I wanted to do, namely manage my home club. I've just spent about 20 hours with the FM12 demo, and nothing significant has changed, at least that matters to me. The point made earlier in this thread about the rapidly increasing Hispanic fan base in some US markets is also extremely valid.

Amazon US has been selling FM11, both on DVD and as digital download, since it was released. They aren't participating in a FM12 pre-order this time around, not sure why. Most US customers buy directly from Steam, since it's Steamworks-based anyway. Direct2Drive and a couple of other US-based digital retailers also have the pre-order available, with different incentives.

The other thing worth mentioning is that American customers who actually understand and follow world football may overall be a lot less tolerant of the (let's be completely honest here) masses of bugs which exist in FM, and the '12 demo is no exception. My approach to the demo was to quick-start a low-level English club, chosen at random, and try to play though a partial season with mostly default settings. In each trial it took ONE DAY for things to go wrong. First day: get hired, meet the boss, do the press conference, and then survey my roster. Assistant asks if I want to schedule a friendly with my reserves on day 2, well of course, let's get a look at these guys. I let the assistant set the lineup and leave all tactics on default settings for that club. So what happens? In the first trial, my guys get booked seven (7) times to no bookings for the reserves, and they beat me 2-0, both goals on penalties. My guys are clearly over-aggressive and are fouling left-and-right. I have no idea what I could have done in ONE DAY to cause this. (It doesn't tell me about the yellow cards in real time unless I'm watching in "full match" mode, but that appears to be a known bug.) Pick a different club and start over. In the second trial, I do a little better, only five yellows to zero for the reserves, but one of my guys gets two yellows and is sent off. In a PRACTICE match! My guys lose to the reserves 1-0 in injury time, shorthanded. In a practice match. And the game expects me to talk to my guys in the clubhouse as if we've just lost the league semi-final, never mind it's my second day on the job. In the third trial I set my own lineup before the practice match, which is difficult because I don't know these clubs, and their stated outfield positions on the club roster don't seem to match up well with that club's default formation. I make my best guesses, and then watch them maneuver aimlessly for 90 minutes while the reserve squad plays with precision and beats me 4-0. At least my guys weren't getting carded. I could go on and on from there...

In addition, the supposedly improved UI has taken a big step backwards for me, although this is unrelated to any anti-US bias. On a GPU-high setting 1920x1080 17" display, watching a 3D match, the player names/jersey #s are so bleeping small it's almost impossible to read them. Plus, there is a signficant delay between mousing over the player and seeing the name or # pop up. This isn't a frame-rate issue, I'm not having any problems with the engine itself. I have to slow the game down to at least half-speed to get reasonable reponse to player mouse-overs if I am trying to follow/analyze one or more specific players, because it has become so difficult to keep track of who is who in 3D. The game clock in the upper-left corner doesn't reset when you're backtracking or reviewing highlights either, it either shows how far the match has progressed live, or else it shows 90:00 + extra time if the match is over. The timer on the match view bar at the bottom is in an obscenely small font and is impossible to read on my display. There really really needs to be a better option for this, it drives us American clock-watchers nuts.

I would really like to see an "official" response from someone at SI regarding what their plans are to make support for US clubs, at least the MLS teams, more on par with first-division leagues in other countries, before I shell out another hard-earned $40 for FM12 after having already bought FM11.

The MLS has had quite a lot of attention for FM12 (pity it wasn't one of the quick starts tbh) I'm no authority though as I've never tried managing there.

I really do think Sega should make Sega USA push FM both PC and console, as I said before it's not just the US itself but Canada, Mexico etc surely?

Couple of things captain_video: If you picked a lower league club (especially from the Blue Square South/North) then there really isn't a whole lot of difference between the first team and the reserves in terms of quality. Combine that with the fact that you set your tactics to 'default' then it's not surprising you lost really. As for the amount of yellow cards you got, there really isn't a bug that's been reported for that. If there was a bug then these forums would have been flooded with 'too many cards' threads.

I do agree with you about the MLS though in FM11, but you can't really comment until you play the full FM12 game (which you obviously haven't because the MLS wasn't a part of the quick set up).

SI have done a lot to improve the MLS this year and I would highly recommend you try it out this year.

Take a look at the improvements:

Then there’s the MLS. A league where clubs are franchises, not clubs. A league where the league own the players and a draft system is used to assign them to the clubs. If you want a really different experience, then try managing in the MLS!

There are a lot of changes and new features for the MLS this year. So many that I don’t really know where to start! So am just going to list some of them in a list below in no particular order…

MLS Academies now create newgens as they would do in real life.

MLS Combine teams now have their real names, alongside improvements to news about players in the Combine teams, to help you as a manager know which of them you should be looking to draft.

The salary cap now increases each year, and the person playing the game gets a news item to tell them what the new salary cap is.

New news item for the MLS All Star game that announces the squad, and highlights the players from your team.

Guaranteed contracts have been improved and are now working as per real life.

MLS rights when a player is sold are now better modelled.

We’ve also added in the weighted lottery draft process into FM this year, with 3 or 4 a year – it’s up to you if you want to take part or not though.

Improvements have been made to the roster confirmation screen, so that players aren’t accidently released.

Improvements made to the designated player code, so that 2 of them cannot be traded, with a 3rd slot available for purchase, with the money spent divided by the clubs in the MLS who decide to not have a 3rd slot.

And finally, we’ve added in the MLS Discovery signings, so you can sign 6 players from foreign clubs or free agents per season. Or 10 if you’re one of the 2 new clubs – the MLS expansion is in too, so we welcome

Vancouver and Portland to Football Manager 2012.

To be clear, these are not the only changes, new things and improvements for the MLS & A League. But hopefully you can see from these the kind of level of detail we go to just for these specific leagues. As we try to do for every league in the game.

Sega is no different from other major game publishers in that they have one division for US and Canada, and another division for Latin N/S America and Brazil, because of the language differences. I don't know how well they are marketing FM in Mexico (who are on the rise internationally these days), I can only speak to the US. The challenge in this country, for both PC and console platforms, is you're going up against well-developed and well-marketed product lines for other major sports which are overall more popular in the US: American-rules football, baseball, basketball, hockey, auto racing, extreme sports, etc. FM does get its share of online marketing; you can't be a US-based Steam user and not know FM12 is about to be released.

This isn't on Sega, it's on SI. There are enough other options available to gaming sports fans in the US for the community to expect a higher standard of performance out of FM than what is being delivered. The fact there are so many major data errors when it comes to MLS clubs is just adding insult to the proverbial injury.

FYI all the research is done for free by voulenteers, not by SI, if you have any issues with the USA data or the MLS there are two threads you can post your concerns.

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/276540-U.S.A.-%28Official%29-League-Specific-Issues

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/276186-U.S.A.-%28Official%29-Data-Issues

and this

Plus, there is a signficant delay between mousing over the player and seeing the name or # pop up.

is probably your tooltip speed settings, I purposely have mine on lower than the default but you can also increase it (well, you can in FM11 and prior versions)

FYI all the research is done for free by voulenteers, not by SI, if you have any issues with the USA data or the MLS there are two threads you can post your concerns.

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/276540-U.S.A.-(Official)-League-Specific-Issues

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/276186-U.S.A.-(Official)-Data-Issues

MLS research this year was centralized in the hands of the head North American researcher, as I recall. One of the top Timbers Army guys who posts in OTF/Football Forum was not happy with that decision, because it treats MLS differently from all the other leagues (where the volunteers do the research for their particular club)

If those of us in the USA preorder through Steam, will it be released at the same time as the UK release? I ask because in the Steam store the release date is listed simply as "October 21," and I know that in the past us Americans have had to make do with "Worldwide Soccer Manager" or something along those lines, which was released later.

FYI all the research is done for free by voulenteers, not by SI, if you have any issues with the USA data or the MLS there are two threads you can post your concerns.

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/276540-U.S.A.-(Official)-League-Specific-Issues

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/276186-U.S.A.-(Official)-Data-Issues

Ooooooo a thread related to MLS, I should post!

As Jason said, the North American HR is doing all the work and the club researchers can't do anything to contribute. I'm not a club researcher but no one is more knowledgeable about their club than passionate season ticket holders and not allowing supporters of all 18 MLS franchises in FM12 to contribute to the game is a slap in the face imo. I don't think one person should research an entire league (as well as the teams and players/backroom staff in the inactive league in the 2nd division NASL).

And since worldwide it's called FM, the game will be released on time, maybe even a bit earlier for us living in Canada/US because it's released Friday at midnight UK time.

Ooooooo a thread related to MLS, I should post!

As Jason said, the North American HR is doing all the work and the club researchers can't do anything to contribute. I'm not a club researcher but no one is more knowledgeable about their club than passionate season ticket holders and not allowing supporters of all 18 MLS franchises in FM12 to contribute to the game is a slap in the face imo. I don't think one person should research an entire league (as well as the teams and players/backroom staff in the inactive league in the 2nd division NASL).

And since worldwide it's called FM, the game will be released on time, maybe even a bit earlier for us living in Canada/US because it's released Friday at midnight UK time.

I find that strange that just the HR is doing all the work, makes no sense to me. Even bigger shame it didnt get a quick start. Not an American FMer but i will be adding my 2 cents for more support of the MLS, it must get a quick start in FM13

In addition, the supposedly improved UI has taken a big step backwards for me, although this is unrelated to any anti-US bias. On a GPU-high setting 1920x1080 17" display, watching a 3D match, the player names/jersey #s are so bleeping small it's almost impossible to read them. Plus, there is a signficant delay between mousing over the player and seeing the name or # pop up. This isn't a frame-rate issue, I'm not having any problems with the engine itself. I have to slow the game down to at least half-speed to get reasonable reponse to player mouse-overs if I am trying to follow/analyze one or more specific players, because it has become so difficult to keep track of who is who in 3D.

Tiny tip from the wall of (interesting) text : If you click on the player you want to track, he becomes "selected" and his name stays visible at all times until you click somewhere else. Of course, you can only track one player at a time like this, but it's better than the mouseover hopefully.

Well, if anything, this may help SI get a bit more of a perspective on how US-based FMers feel like they are being treated.

And thanks for trying to get the marketing SI guy to this thread to the mods--hopefully we'll get some feedback.

Well, if anything, this may help SI get a bit more of a perspective on how US-based FMers feel like they are being treated.

And thanks for trying to get the marketing SI guy to this thread to the mods--hopefully we'll get some feedback.

Matt (marketing guy) already posted #33

If those of us in the USA preorder through Steam, will it be released at the same time as the UK release? I ask because in the Steam store the release date is listed simply as "October 21," and I know that in the past us Americans have had to make do with "Worldwide Soccer Manager" or something along those lines, which was released later.

Anyone from SI or Sega have the answer to this? Thanks!

If those of us in the USA preorder through Steam, will it be released at the same time as the UK release? I ask because in the Steam store the release date is listed simply as "October 21," and I know that in the past us Americans have had to make do with "Worldwide Soccer Manager" or something along those lines, which was released later.

It should be.

IIRC, they dropped the "Worldwide Soccer Manager" brand a couple years ago. I used Steam last year, and by my memory the release was standardized (i.e. I could play as soon as UK users could)