The development of Football Manager 25 has hit yet another snag. Developer Sports Interactive studio manager Miles Jacobson has announced that Football Manager 25’s release is being delayed from early November to late November.
“Firstly, we’ve had to shift the official announcement of FM25 to the end of September,” he said. “The gameplay focus period will follow soon thereafter. Our target launch date has moved accordingly and is now scheduled for late November, rather than our usual early November slot.”
In addition to the game’s reveal and launch delay, Jacobson announced that a couple features were being removed from the game.
International Management is being removed from the game on PC, Console, and FM 25 Touch. The reasoning given is that after looking at where it was at this point in development, it was decided that what was going to release wouldn’t reach the company’s “initial quality threshold”.
“We also considered the available game data,” Jacobson said. “Only 5.6% of all FM24 PC saves have used the mode, which we feel validates our view that we need to do much, much better with the experience. That number is even smaller on Console.”
He did say that it will remain available in Football Manager 25 Mobile due to it being built with a different codebase.
“For all other versions, international management will return in a much more feature-rich way to FM26, FM26 Console and FM26 Touch in what will be an exciting year for international football with the World Cup expanding to 48 teams,” he said.
The other removed feature isn’t a major one, but a removal nonetheless. Player weights will no longer be visible within profiles across the game.
Jacobson says that the introduction of Women’s soccer to the game is the leading factor in the decision.
“Through the creation of our Women’s Football database, we discovered that while the weight of male athletes can change a bit month to month, women’s body types are very different from men’s and their weight fluctuates a lot more, often weekly,” he said.
“This perspective encouraged us to review the wider game, much like we have with all other areas, and we’ve ultimately decided to no longer show weight for any players in FM25. A very basic measurement will still be included under the hood, but it won’t be visible on the front end anymore.”
The reason for the multiple delays and feature removals stem from the game’s transition over to the Unity Engine. The series had been built on the studio’s own internal Sports Interactive Operating System (SIOS).
What do you think of the latest delay and feature changes for Football Manager 25? For more Insider Gaming, check out what popular streamer had a game made about him.
