Like several other members of the PC Pro editorial team, I pretty much drop all pretence of working/eating/sleeping/human contact for a month or so at the same point each year: when Football Manager is released for the PC. This year will be no different, as I bravely attempt to carry local minnows Bromley from the Blue Square South to the Champions League, ducking and diving in the transfer market and abusing my fellow managers in the press.

But, for the first time in its short lifetime, I am genuinely considering opting against Football Manager. Actually, that’s a barefaced lie – i fully intend to buy FM2010, but this year I’m also going to buy its big rival, Championship Manager.

Not because I think it will have improved to a level at which it genuinely competes with Sports Interactive’s record-smashing masterpiece – although early reports suggest it’s giving it a hell of a go – but because Eidos is doing something a bit different with the CM2010 launch.

You see, not only is CM2010 being released more than a month earlier in an attempt to snag managers’ attentions sufficiently to prevent them feeding their Football Manager habit, but the makers are also letting you pay pretty much whatever you like. Yes, Eidos is doing a Radiohead.

Technically, the minimum is £2.51, as you have to pay at least a penny and there’s a £2.50 transaction fee, but it’s a move that will surely tempt FM fans curious as to how the lesser rival is faring up. The hope is that enough of them will be surprised by what they find, and may not make the move back across when FM2010 hits the shops in October.

But will this actually work on gamers? And, in an industry being pummelled to pieces by software piracy, how many will choose to pay anything more than the bare minimum?

I’m not entirely convinced by Radiohead’s claims that most people paid decent money for their In Rainbows album, but I’m even less convinced when the question is shifted to games. This is a game which will retail at around £24.99 in stores and, even though this offer only applies to pre-orders of the download version before the September 11th launch, that’s a huge difference from the £8 or £9 most new albums sell for.

I could see myself feasibly being generous and paying a fiver for an album on this type of offer, but there’s not a chance in Hell that I’d voluntarily stump up anything close to £25 for a game if I didn’t have to.

I know this is purely a publicity stunt, and it’s one that Eidos really needs to work if it’s going to break Sports Interactive’s stranglehold on the football management genre, but does an ‘honesty box’ sales model have any long-term merit in the games market? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.