New Champ Manager goes on sale for 1p

The latest edition of the Championship Manager football game is available to order online today from as little one penny.

Publisher Eidos is looking to massively increase the game’s reach, but insists it still remains committed to the boxed product release.

A limited edition pack with additional CM Season Live updates, bonus DVDs and sundry other extras hits stores at 29.99 from September 11th.

Eidos skipped a Championship Manager release last season to give Beautiful Game Studios more time to create a game that could challenge current market leader Football Manager from Sega.

The company believes, however, that it has to do something dramatic to widen the football management genre, as well as return its CM brand to former greatness.

This is the first time an initiative like this has ever been tried in the video games market,” said Championship Manager General Manager Roy Meredith.

This is the best Championship Manager the studio has ever made and we want as many people as possible to try the full new game as once they try it we’re convinced they will come back again and again.”

The ‘Pay What You Want’ pre-order promotion will run from today until midnight on September 10 – from which point users will be able to download their game directly from www.champmanstore.com.

Consumers must pay a 2.50 transaction fee plus any additional amount of their choice, starting from just a penny.

It echoes a similar strategy employed by Radiohead in 2007, when the band put its album In Rainbows on sale digitally – and consumers could pay whatever they wanted to download it.

Championship Manager 2010 has a variety of new features, including a bespoke 3D match engine with over 500 individual player animations, a set-piece creator giving users the chance to make their own free-kicks and corners, scouting networks to find new talent in countries around the world and practice matches to help select the perfect team or trial new stars.