Football Manager boss Miles Jacobson has some bad news (YouTube)
The upcoming Football Manager game has been delayed by several weeks, as studio boss Miles Jacobson admits that moving to a new engine has been tough.
Last year’s Football Manager 2024 introduced lots of new features, such as positional play and intermediaries, but once developer Sports Interactive started showing off the upcoming sequel earlier this summer it became clear that it will be a very different game.
Football Manager 2025 uses a new game engine, which is causing the developer lots of problems. They’ve already had to remove many of the existing game modes, such as fantasy draft and create-a-club, and features such as tactical shouts, but more has had to be axed to reach the finish line in November.
In a new update, the game’s director reveals that Football Manager 2025 is delayed and that even more features are being cut, as he calls development ‘challenging.’ Fans are now worried about what state the upcoming football simulator will be in, with some ready to skip it.
In a blog post Sports Interactive studio director Miles Jacobson says that Football Manager 2025 has been delayed from early November to ‘late November’ but there’s no longer any specific date.
‘The FM25 development cycle has been challenging for the whole team. We knew that moving the entire game to the Unity engine was going to be a complex endeavour.
‘As we’ve gotten deeper into the process and gained learnings, it’s fair to say it’s been trickier than we originally anticipated. The entire dev team has been challenged in a myriad of new ways and are doing an incredible job in the process,’ he said.
The challenges Jacobson and his team are facing are also causing the developer to axe more features from the game.
This includes all international football, from all Football Manager 2025 formats except Mobile. This has been justified by stating that ‘only’ 5.6% of all FM24 PC saves used the mode. International teams will exist in the simulation, however, just not as a playable mode.
The traditional inbox will also be changed for the Portal in Football Manager 2025 (Sega)
Women’s football is being added to FM25, but that too is causing an issue with the upcoming game, as Jacobson says they’re removing player weight because men and women fluctuate in weight differently.
Considering the news earlier this summer, that they’re dropping a a significant amount of features, and this week’s update, fans are becoming increasingly worried.
In a Reddit thread titled ‘FM25 is heading to be a hot mess,’ the poster is contemplating skipping the upcoming Football Manager title, saying:
‘I’ve been a massive Football Manager player since 2010, I’ve bought every version apart from the last couple due to Game Pass. I’ve been a little concerned about a few of the dropped features, but every piece of news seems to be more as more jarring.’
Another Football Manager fan, Bec SPK, replied saying, ‘With how development sounds I might pass on ‘25 but will happily get ‘26 if they have everything together.’
‘I think a lot of people will stick to FM24 with updated databases. All these delays for a new engine that you haven’t released the specs [of],’ Like Mike said.
International football will return eventually, as Jacobson says work on it has only been ‘paused’ for the time being.
Sports Interactive is is only two months away from the initial release date, and have had to free up more time for its developers to get Football Manager 2025 ready for launch, hence the decisions to remove features.
An extra couple of weeks should help the veteran developer to focus on more essential features, but whether that’s enough time we’ll have to wait and see.
Football Manager fans are worried for this year’s release (Twitter)
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