Football Manager 25 Cancelled

meths

meths

meths

Soldato
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Fair play to the Devs. Not many companies would have done the same.

"We could have pressed on, released FM25 in its current state, and fixed things down the line - but that’s not the right thing to do. We were also unwilling to go beyond a March release as it would be too late in the football season to expect players to then buy another game later in the year."
 
I'm not sure I'd go so far as fair play, but I am glad they've not pushed out something that clearly wasn't ready.

What I do find puzzling is that at one point they were promising a standard release in the autumn, and then said very close to the deadline "actually, we need a few more months". And then it's still not ready for March.

So I am struggling to see what kind of game they had in the summer that led them to believe an autumn release was possible, but in actuality was so bad that even another 3-4 months of work could not turn it into something they considered releasable.
 
I wonder if the fact that the PC version is out on Gamepass and the mobile version is through Netflix makes their decision easier to postpone it.

Maybe if that wasn't the case they'd have just pushed it out broken.
 
Martini1991 said:
It's just a game delay but with the game being called a different name.
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I've never understood with this model why they need to release "a new game" every year. Just create a core base game, and then each year they can supply a "2025" upgrade, with new content, and any new features/core changes.

Whilst I'm positive there is an element of reusing code from the previous release, to have to keep releasing almost a brand new game each year puts a lot of pressure on getting the basics right.
 
I think that's what they did. Incremental updates.

25 was the first full rebuild for years and they've blown it.
 
Yeah, on the whole it was a very similar core game each year with a few features added.

But when they did more incremental changes - like FM24 was - a lot of the fans got really angry that there weren't more headline features added. Personally I was always a bit ambivalent about the big features, because they tended not to be great when first implemented and took a couple of years to properly bed in.

The problem was that they sort of trapped themselves, because people expected new features every year and they struggled to really deliver them - whilst also fixing the issues they'd identified in the previous version.

I think that adding features every 2 years and data updates annually for example might have been a better approach for the players, but I'm sure it would have hurt sales.
 
Well tbf FM24 was the best seller yet, so it’s pretty clear that we do want a new version every year.
 
montymint said:
Hopefully it means we can have the game slightly earlier into the season (Sept)
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I think this is wishful thinking.
SI are strict with data locks anyway, and they're not quick with transfer updates.

At best, possibly an end of September beta maybe? Id certainly expect first full week of October though
Or do they take longer and put in the features they removed?
 
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Martini1991 said:
I think this is wishful thinking.
SI are strict with data locks anyway, and they're not quick with transfer updates.

At best, possibly an end of September beta maybe? Id certainly expect first full week of October though
Or do they take longer and put in the features they removed?
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A man can certainly dream :D
 
imtoooldforthis said:
I read they now make more money from the mobile games than the main game ? is that true ? If so I can see the series going down the pooper from here on out
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they have been basically milking the same pc game with a new skin for what a decade? its money for old rope.

its not like they ever seem to go above and beyond with PC releases in the first place. they just kept it in a coma
 
I think they also realised that if they released FM25 in March/April, a) that's too near the end of the season to expect good sales but also b) to then release FM26 in October/November and expect good sales when they are charging north of £30 and even nearly £40, they knew one or both releases would tank and they'd lose money.

It seems the whole move to a new engine has caused the problems and it feels to me that SI have completely underestimated the scale of the challenge and just weren't ready to switch. Imagine if FM26 does come out in October/November with the extra time now there's no FM25 to finish/release/patch and it's still awful. Could really hurt the company, maybe not financially but reputationally at least.

Oh and releasing the statement at 2.30am? Mature move. Couldn't release it during working hours? Who honestly thought that releasing the news in the early hours would go down well at all?
 
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