Sports Interactive and SEGA have unveiled, with a rich insight, the first two main features of Football Manager 2022, arriving on November 9 on Steam, Epic Games Store and Microsoft Store. FM22 will also be available from day one within Xbox Game Pass for PC.
All coaches will have at their disposal the same technologies and analogous analysis and observation tools that real clubs use to achieve success thanks to the new data hub, which allows you to better prepare each game. Once seated on the digital bench, however, you will be able to watch the most realistic simulation of the games ever appeared in the seriesmade possible by the new animation engine and several improvements to artificial intelligence.
Football Manager 2022: the development process
These two important features and their development process were detailed in the first part of a two-video series, “In the Studio,” presented by James Allcott. James, in the company of some members of the Sports Interactive team, carefully examines how these new areas of functionality improve the overall Football Manager experience.
This is just the beginning of a series of content that will explore all the new features over the next few weeks. The second part of “In the Studio” will be released next week and will focus on two major new features, followed by a series of posts from aMore information on the Football Manager blog regarding the different areas affected by the new features, as well as the various improvements made to the game. The other features will be announced on Football Manager’s social channels (such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook) and on the personal profiles of the studio director of Sports Interactive, Miles Jacobson (such as Twitter and Instagram).
All those who pre-purchase Football Manager 2022 (For PC and Mac), from an authorized SEGA reseller * receive a 10% discount until launch. They will also have the opportunity to start their career on the bench early thanks to early access to FM22. This preview phase will be available approximately two weeks before the official launch of the game and the careers started at that juncture can be continued in the final version of the game.
An overview of the features
Data hub
The data hub is a brand new section in the sidebar of FM22 which houses all the functions necessary for data analysis and performance.
From here the coaches can consult and study all the team performance metrics to analyze the evolution of the game over the 90 minutes and understand where there is room for improvement. From here it is also possible to analyze the individual performances of the players individually, useful to understand what are the strengths of your game system and where, instead, the weaknesses to work on in training lurk.
New data visualization modes, such as influence area maps or the performance inertia graph, along with a redesign of passing maps, rend the life of the coaches simpler, allowing them to understand more clearly and easily the direct impact of their decisions on the success rate, the diagnosis of any problems of a technical and tactical nature, and to accurately identify which players make the most effective contribution to the team.
Coaches who want to fully immerse themselves in the world of data analytics and statistics can leverage the data hub even further and ask analytics collaborators to provide customized reports on a wide range of topics, such as percentage of dogfights won by their defenders compared, for example, to those of other teams in the league.
Real clubs use the same metrics and analytics methods to improve their performance on the pitch, and finally FM players will be able to do so too.
Match engine
FM22 match engine scores the beginning of a new era in our eternal quest to create the perfect simulation of what happens on the pitch.
A new animation engine ensures a level of authenticity on the pitch never before achieved. The movements of the players now appear much more realistic and natural thanks to the implementation of “root motion” technology, while the touch of the ball in the dribbling and conduction phases have been rethought to expand the range of possible movements for the players, who now they can rotate around the ball and perform feints such as the famous “Cruijff turn”.
Significant improvements AI lead to a more realistic flow of passing textures within a match. A new pressing system has been introduced in which the players are more aware of their shooting ability and know when they can, or not, go to press their opponents. The precision value in. Has also been revised in such a way that the condition of the players has a greater impact on the accuracy of passes, shots and touches than before.
Another novelty of FM22 concerns the introduction of the wide defensive center, a role that allows coaches to have much more flexibility when deploying the three-man defense. The wide central defensive units can be deployed in the field with defense, support or attack tasks, the offensive predisposition involves a greater tendency to overlap to create two-on-one situations.