Sports Interactive is planning a 'soft launch' of its online multiplayer twist on soccer management sim Football Manager 2009, with massively multiplayer footy to kick off properly early in 2009.

The Live edition will essentially be a football MMO, with multiple servers hosting different sets of competing teams. Players can subscribe for as little as 3 months (How will that work? Will AI take over for the rest of the season if they bail?) with free additional content available every few months.

SI's Miles Jacobson said, “This year there'll be a limited amount of game worlds launched, which are available for people to pre-order at the moment, and they should be released before the end of the year. Then there'll be a proper push on FML early next year.”

Football MMO Coming from Sports Interactive [Softpedia]

Contact information for this author is not available.