The new football season is underway, and with it a desire from players around the world for the new Football Manager game.
Football Manager 2025 is set to move the franchise forward in a massive way. The game is moving to the Unity engine to provide a massive graphical leap forward, while the women's game will enter the franchise for the first time ever.
However, a fresh announcement has dropped from developers Sports Interactive stating that the game will suffer a delay from its usual early November release window.
FM25 Delayed
In the latest development update, studio director Miles Jacobson confirmed that the whole rollout and launch of Football Manager 2025 will be delayed.
This delay is only small, moving the announcement from early September to the end of the month. The knock-on effect is that the target launch date has moved back as well, from the usual early November window to late November.
This is disappointing for those who usually circle the last week of October for the beta, but it is better to push the launch back than deliver an underbaked game for what is a crucial year for Sports Interactive and Football Manager.
Unity complications
This delay is down to the difficulty Sports Interactive is having in moving to the Unity engine.
"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. I’m excited to eventually share our hard work with you but we need a little more time before we can do that."
It's a shame, but again an understandable part of making such a monumental change to the franchise.
No international management
There are a few casualties from the game we know going into FM25, but one of the biggest will be the news that there will be no international management in Football Manager 2025.
This is a shame, but the international experience in FM has always been relatively poor. This managerial option will return in FM26 and will still be part of the overall simulation, but you won't be able to take charge of your country in FM25.
As Jacobson explains, not many players actually use international management. This may be due to it being less involved and far from the in-depth experience that club management offers. But it is a sensible decision to remove it and it will be back "in a much more feature-rich way" for FM26.