Let's play: Champ Manager - Xbox

BBC Sport Online reviewer David Gibbon says Championship Manager is a sure-fire hit on the Xbox, as it has been on PC.

If there's one series that can truly be described as an epic - it has to be Championship Manager.

This football management sim is one of the most successful games of all time - and easily the best of its genre.

Now, it is finally making its debut on a console system.

The vast majority of people who buy an Xbox are going to be in their 20s or older due to the current high cost of the machine.

  Championship manager

Format: Xbox

Price: £44.99

Publisher: Eidos Interactive

Genre: Footie management

Also Available: PC

Many will be male and into football - so this is near certain to be a success.

Unlike most Xbox titles out there, this one isn't about showing off the graphics. Instead, it's about pure gameplay and the joy of taking your team to glory.

CM enables soccer fans to act out their footballing dreams, whether they be leading Manchester United to Europe or a lower division team to the dizzy heights of the Premiership.

The game is packed to the brim with footballing delights.

Sort out players who misbehave, calm down the chairman when things aren't going according to plan and worry about contract disputes with your top players.

Once you've played it for a while, you soon appreciate why managers get grey hair!

You pick the team and pull the strings

Every little detail is here.

Setting up your team, for example, allows you to do dabble with some sophisticated tactics.

You can assign roles to players, set up specific positions for them when they are in certain areas of the pitch and lots more.

But the real genius of CM is that you really can do what you want. It is a serious game that can be as trivial or as complex as the player desires.

Complexity - especially in strategy games - struggles to translate to consoles.

This is the reason CM hasn't made an appearance one until now.

But the Xbox is built very much like a PC and, thanks to that hard drive, very little has been missed out.

  Gibbon's verdict

Graphics: 74%

Playability: 93%

Sound: 54%

Realism: 92%

Overall: 90%

There are leagues from around the world, there are more than 80,000 players and you can manage one of several thousand teams.

Furthermore, the actual interface follows the same brilliant design of the original.

The only change is the control system, which has been amended to take advantage of the analogue stick on the control pad rather than a PC mouse.

One drawback for CM connoisseurs is the inability to control more than three leagues at any one time.

To be frank, though, this doesn't really detract from the game.

CM is still best on a PC. But if you don't own one, then the Xbox version is an absolute must for all football fiends.