Football Manager 25, scheduled for release next month, has been delayed until March.
This is the first major delay for an edition of Football Manager since 2002 and will impact millions of gamers worldwide. The 2024 edition of the game was played by seven million players within 100 days of its release. Football Manager content creators attract hundreds of thousands of subscribers on YouTube. And Sports Interactive, the creator of Football Manager, had revenues of over £66million in the financial year ending in March 2023, according to Companies House.
This delay is a big deal for both fans and the company behind the game. The decision means that, after extensive discussions with SEGA, licensors and partners, Sports Interactive concluded that more time was needed to ensure the game meets expectations, and will not have been taken lightly.
So what happened — and what does it mean for the franchise?
How big is this news?
Football Manager has been among the most prominent football video games on the market for more than two decades.
Unlike the EAFC (formerly known as FIFA) franchise, which is primarily played on consoles, Football Manager was popularised as a desktop video game. Instead of directing the players’ fortunes directly with a video-game controller, players assume the role of an old-school manager — signing players, assigning and hiring coaching staff, and setting up the team — with little direct input once a match kicks off.
Despite its fairly idiosyncratic nature, it is not only hugely popular among football fans in general but also has a devoted community of long-time players, online video creators, and live streamers. Ahead of FM25, the franchise broke records in successive years, with Sports Interactive reporting FM24 had over seven million players.
The game allows players to play as a football manager (Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images)
With versions available on desktop, console and mobile, individual platform release dates will be confirmed at a later date.
Fans who pre-ordered the game will have the option to request refunds. It has also been confirmed that advanced access for PC/Mac will still be available before the new release date, with further details to follow.
Why has the game been delayed?
There were ominous signs around the release date of the game in September, when Sports Interactive pushed the launch back from early November to later that month.
The given reasons were… fairly technical. Essentially, however, they revolve around switching from an in-house game engine to an outside engine called Unity.
A game engine is a virtual environment with settings to simplify video game development. Sports Interactive previously built the foundations for its game from the ground up but is now switching to Unity, a game engine that supports gameplay on various platforms, including desktop, console, mobile and virtual reality.
Unity is among the most popular game engines available to game developers. It is the engine used for Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, Pokemon Go and Subway Surfers, among other popular video games.
But this change has proved more complicated and lengthy than expected, and left developers with too little time to deliver the quality fans and developers expect. Football Manager declined to comment when asked about this by The Athletic but, in a statement released on Thursday, said: “We simply cannot compromise the delivery of this crucial juncture in Football Manager’s history by rushing to release it in November.”
It was also emphasised that FM25 represents the “biggest technical and visual advancement in the series for a generation” and that meeting this standard requires further time.
While acknowledging the disappointment the delay will bring, the company highlighted the strain on their team during the development cycle.
“It has been a difficult development cycle for the studio,” their statement said. “Many things have been moving slower than we had predicted — despite everyone in the team working at an incredible pace to try and get everything done. Timelines were already tight and, as rightly pointed out by many of your recent comments, we were simply rushing too much and in danger of compromising our usual standards.
“This has put an enormous amount of pressure on everyone working across the studio.”
What is FM trying to do with the new edition?
When the switch to Unity was announced, Sports Interactive outlined several reasons why it made sense:
“The switch to Unity is going to give us a lot more power graphically, across all formats, alongside powerful user interface tools.
FM25 will be moved over to the game engine Unity (Football Manager)
“In simple terms, FM25 will have a significantly better-looking matchday experience — both on the pitch and the supporting stadium environments, alongside a vastly improved user interface that will dramatically improve how you navigate through screens and access all the information available to you as manager.”
It was not only the game engine which was changing, however: FM25 is also set to be the first of its kind to feature women’s football, and had also partnered with the Premier League to ensure all 20 top-flight clubs will be officially licensed, meaning player images and club badges will be available.
Is there a historical precedent for this kind of delay?
Yes. Championship Manager 4 — FM’s predecessor, which was also built by Sports Interactive — was slated for release in late 2002 but was postponed until the following March. As with FM25 now, Championship Manager 4 was a revolutionary release for the company, as it was the first iteration to include a graphical 2D match engine.
At the time, a statement issued by Sports Interactive said the delay was due to needing “time to keep tuning the game and make some more refinements”.
Upon its release, Championship Manager 4 became the fastest-selling PC game of all time in Britain. It was also awarded a “Platinum” sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association, indicating sales of at least 300,000 copies in the UK. However, some players complained it was a downgrade on previous versions, with bugs a persistent problem.
Has this been a controversial development cycle?
Football Manager has enjoyed record sales success in recent years, but fans of the franchise have been more critical in the weeks leading up to the latest edition’s initial scheduled release.
The developers have dropped the international management option for FM25, meaning gamers can no longer take charge of national teams and compete for trophies such as the World Cup and European Championship.
A statement from Sports Interactive released in early September read: “We’ve looked really hard at international management in FM and determined that what we were planning to deliver wouldn’t reach our initial quality threshold.”
It remains a feature of the mobile edition, and is set to return to all platforms for FM26.
What do industry experts think?
The reaction from within the gaming industry was not one of surprise.
“Changing technology and porting a product while trying to ship a new version is always going to be a challenge,” says a video game executive with experience working with Unity, speaking to The Athletic on condition of anonymity to protect relationships. “Porting from a custom engine to Unity will have its challenges. There is no magic button that converts all your code, libraries and art. There are different rules, file formats and ratios. Often, that mountain of work is underestimated.”
But there was also confidence that the switch — while proving difficult in the short term — will have longer-term benefits.
“In the long run, Unity will provide many advantages as engine development is, in practice, outsourced, but switching is painful,” the executive says. “Game code, assets, libraries, etc aren’t a one-to-one fit, so many, if not all, things need to be rebuilt from scratch. That job always looks much more straightforward than what ends up being the reality.
There would be long-term benefits to switching engine (Football Manager)
“Unity is a good engine and makes developers’ lives easier. It’s also easier to find developers in the hiring process who know Unity versus getting new team members up to speed on a custom engine. That makes hiring easier.
“Also, Unity develops all the engine upgrades regularly, so you’ll always have a game that’s state of the art without needing to hire or maintain a massive in-house engine team.”
What will be the impact commercially?
“Missing out on Christmas sales has quite an impact,” the same executive says. “This is when players usually have disposable income, ask for gifts and have holiday time to play.
“March is not an impossible release window, but it starts to get close to summer, which can be tricky. People tend to spend more time outdoors and less indoors, playing games, when the weather improves. Also, consumer purchases are reflected less on games and more on rollerblades and other such things.
“I would imagine Football Manager is more popular during the football season. March is towards the end of the season (for European clubs), and many potential players might be disappointed with their team’s performance and have a temporary football hiatus. The closer to the start of the season, I imagine, the better for sales.”
(Top photo: Football Manager)