Front Office Football Nine
The ninth installment of our signature product, Front Office Football Nine, was released on October 31, 2023. It is available through
our Steam Store. The most recent update is Version 9.1, released on September 24, 2024. Steam will automatically update installations of the game.
Put yourself in the front office with Front Office Football Nine.
In Front Office Football, you play the role of your favorite team's general manager. You determine your team's future through trading with opponents, negotiating contracts, bidding for free agents and discovering new talent through the annual amateur draft.
You can also play the role of the armchair coach, setting game plans, creating playbooks and depth charts. You can call every play yourself if you like.
You can determine ticket prices and submit stadium construction plans for public approval. You can move your team if the public won't properly support your franchise.
The original game, released in 1998, received an Editors' Choice award from Computer Gaming World and a 4 1/2-star review. It was nominated for numerous Sports Game of the Year awards. This is the Ninth full version of the game, released with rosters based on the 2023 season.
Front Office Football is designed to represent a snapshot of professional football as it exists under the current salary cap system. You play
the role of the general manager of a team. In order to succeed in Front Office Football, you need to perform as well as possible in four different areas.
- Team Performance. On the field, your primary goal is winning the coveted Front Office Bowl. Your fans, players and staff all want to see that
championship banner raised to a new position in the ring of honor surrounding your stadium.
- Financial Performance. Off the field, your team needs to show a profit, or the owner will become angry and threaten your job. You need to
control salary and staff costs while balancing the need to spend money to build and upgrade your stadium against the risk of facing stagnant
ticket revenue with an aging arena.
- Roster Value. You need to negotiate contracts, sign free agents, make wise decisions in the amateur draft and outsmart opposing general
managers in trade. Building a strong, capable roster means everything in Front Office Football.
- Franchise Value. The bottom line is that a happy owner has a franchise that's the envy of professional football. Nothing means more to the
owners than seeing their franchise on the top of the list of most valuable franchises. You help put your team on that list by excelling in the
three other categories, but the best general managers look for opportunities to move the team in order to find a home town with a strong
economy that will support your team like none other.
New Features for Front Office Football Nine
Front Office Football Nine was built on an entirely new code base, designed for simulation speed, growth and flexibility. The list of new features is extensive:
- An intuitive interface, redesigned from the moment you enter a new career. The emphasis is on clear, quick navigation to the information you want to see.
- Flexible league sizes and structures. Front Office Football Nine ships with 17 different league configurations, ranging from nine teams to 32. Each configuration has a designated schedule rotation ensuring teams play a fair schedule each season. Franchises can be based in default cities or randomly assigned when you start a new universe.
- Calendar-based actions. Each year has a month/day calendar, with important dates highlighted. A Team Management screen is always available, with links and descriptions of everything you can do for your team on that day. You can simulate to any date on the calendar (up to 10,000 days at a time).
- Play-Calling Interface. A brand new full-screen play-calling interface allows you to call your team's plays during a game, make substitutions, view updated individual and team statistics.
- Historical Quarterbacks. With any league, you have the option of including a selection of starting quarterbacks from the past. These quarterbacks are rated in far more detail than in a player file.
- The "Video" Podcast. Each week, the league puts together an overview of all the games played, highlighting the most important plays.
- Comprehensive weather system. Every day, the weather is calculated for each of the metropolitan areas modeled in the game. Each metropolitan area has a climate. You can "see" storm fronts move across countries.
- Foreign franchises. Front Office Football models 1,171 metropolitan areas in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. Cities in 322 of these areas can host franchises.
- Compensation Picks. Each season, teams will receive compensatory draft picks for free agents they lost the previous year.
- Team and League Overview screens. Among nearly 200 screens in Front Office Football Nine are the new Team Overview and League Overview screens, which act as front pages for your universe.
- Fan Allegiance. Each franchise has a fan base, based on the television markets defined in major metropolitan areas. Teams can improve their following by winning games and championships. Teams with a bigger fan base have a more valuable brand and earn more money each season.
- Expanded Almanac. The Almanac contains leaderboards, award lists, sections for each franchise and for each season. It's a comprehensive and greatly expanded history of your universe.
- Player Index. A searchable record of every player who has been drafted and/or has played in a game in your universe.
- Milestones. A list of the greatest individual performances, plus season and career thresholds, tracked by date.
- Game Books. An all-inclusive record of each game played during your universe, including a Game Flow that constantly tracks the likelihood a team wins a game and marks the most important plays of the game.
- Game Recaps. For any game played in your universe, you can enter the recap and see all the play diagrams and updated statistics.
- Modern New Statistics. For quarterbacks and receivers, the game tracks air yards and yards after catch. Learn who is really testing the defense. See how quarterbacks fare against the blitz. Learn which running backs have the highest percentage of successful runs.
- Player Finances. Learn which players have the highest career earnings and sell the most jerseys. Players who are both stars on the field and popular with the fans sell more jerseys, which means more team revenue.
- Injury Models. Players are rated for and can develop increase susceptibility to injuries in several areas of the body.
- Revamped Chemistry. Chemistry is now defined only between quarterbacks and wide receivers. It's possible your new free agent star wideout simply doesn't work well with your quarterback.
- Fifth-Year Contracts. Three years after the amateur draft, you'll have the opportunity to extend the contracts of players you drafted in the first round for a guaranteed fifth year.
- New Defensive Play-Calling System. A more intuitive and expansive defensive play system based on setting up one of 16 pass coverages along with double-team, spy, blitzing choices.
Those are only the highlights of all the new features in Front Office Football Nine. Thanks for considering the game.
Please visit the
Front Office Football Nine Steam Store
for more information and to purchase the game. You can find a large selection of screen shots
and a brief trailer describing the game.
EA SPORTS
Electronic Arts published versions of Front Office Football in 1999, 2000 and 2001. While they
are no longer for sale, this was a great experience for Solecismic Software and resulted in
tremendous exposure for Front Office Football. For more
information about EA Sports products,
please visit EA SPORTS.