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Sports Interactive is a British computer game development company based in London and is owned by a Japanese video games and software company called Sega. Sports Interactive is responsible for developing some of the most popular computer games of its time such as NHL Eastside Hockey Manager, Football Manager, Championship Manager Quiz and they are the former developers of the Championship Manager Series. All the releases of the Championship Manager Series have conventionally been some of the highest selling computer games in England and Championship Manager 4 was the fastest selling game of all time.
Sports Interactive was founded by the Collyer brothers, Paul and Oliver. The company is known by the abbreviation "SI" among the large number of fans of their products. The company announced in 2003 that it will not develop computer games under the brand name Championship Manager as the brand was now owned by their publisher Eidos Interactive. On February 12 2004 the announcement was made that Sports Interactive had signed up with Sega for a publishing deal that will produce their latest football management games. The games were to be created under the brand called Football Manager.
Sports Interactive has had a good relationship with AFC Wimbledon since the formation of the club. The games Championship Manager 1&2 contain a pro-AFCWimbledon message that can be seen occasionally during the startup. This is along with another rare and outdated message - "Save Chip!” Sports Interactive are main sponsors of AFC Wimbledon and their logo appears on the team strip.
Sports Interactive in 2004 announced a deal for helping Out of Park Baseball by Markus Heinsohn. After that in April 2006 it was announced that the holding company of their publishers Sega Holding Europe Limited had acquired Sports Interactive. In January 2007, Sports Interactive announced the launching of a new hugely popular multiplayer football management game online called Football Manager Live. The game was similar to Football Manager 2007, however as the name would suggest, it was played totally online. Up to 1000 people could play the game within a virtual world and there were many of them. The game was originally going to be released in March 2008; however it was actually released in January 2009. This game has a player database which is comprised of more than 330,000 football players and ten playable leagues. Another facility is that the players can communicate with each other using game chat.
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