I noticed Miles didn't put his name on the statement.
Gaming Football Manager 2025 | Cancelled
- Thread starter Solius
- Start date
Personally I think they should keep the money from pre orders.
Can we preorder 26?
The only thing Sega have put his name on is a P45
I’ve been saying for years that they need to skip a year and give the game a complete overhaul to fix the persistent issues. Hope it actually pays off.
I wonder if these sports games going bi-annual rather than annual would really lose them that much money? It surely would mean more meaningful updates (though probably not I guess in EA's case) and I don't imaging that many people buy every single one at full price anyway. Just add a paid DLC for a season update to raise some cash from the next season instead.
Didn't they announce this overhaul back in 2020 or something like that? They've most likely had teams working on it in parallel with the most recent releases.
All the content creators must be so happy too. Another months of trying to milk any engagement on groundless leaks
Pretends to be shocked.
What is so special in that new engine? From trailers it doesn't look THAT special or demanding to cause cancelation.
Maybe this will allow them to shift to an annual release date in Sept/early Oct instead of fecking late November. But that’s sensible so they probably won’t.
I guess every time push actually comes to shove on it they get scared of the year of revenue loss and push it back. The money men probably tell them it's an insanely bad idea. Which it is. They've had such an undisputed monopoly on this market that nobody would even dare try to compete, but someone else would have a chance of doing ok now if they put out a good management sim after the year SI have had.
Good job I'm still playing FM2010 or I would have been gutted with this carry-on.
The difference between editions is often so minor that it's pretty much just a data update anyway, but they realised people are happy to pay full price year on year.
The mistake SI made was announcing all of these big changes. They should have just kept it all under wraps until they knew it was ready to go, and carried on pumping out basically the same game with a fresh coat of paint until then.
FM22 and 23 were already not great in terms of new features, then they literally announced that FM24 was going to be basically the same as the previous edition, with FM25 being amazing as the excuse.
We've not seen anything of it in any trailers.
Well no because they will be losing out financially.
I was thinking that, but if they've decided to cancel now who knows where they were with FM2026. It could all be a mess logistically now - was the team split, is FM2026 started etc?
Good job they have been open about it. Oh wait..
I think this was the last match engine before collision detection became a thing between the players so you could set up a tactic around spamming through balls to an Advanced Forward/Poacher type player upfront and they'd run right through the opposition defenders.
Still not as good as the CM 03/04 match engines inability to pick up runners from centre midfield (Diablo tactic era) but it was very fun nonetheless.
They would never hit a September release date with the glacial speed they move at for transfer updates.
They've been working on it for 5 years. Makes you wonder what they had ready in November. It looked like a mobile game at that point from the screenshots
That would require them to actually care about their player base. Seems like too much work for SI, that.
I mean I shit on them more than anyone but I think this is a fair shout by them. It would take away resources to create that database and they know the fans will mod a database anyway. There's probably already one that's up to date on one of the usual places.
Football Manager has been garbage ever since Sega got involved and even from the CM series to FM (thank you Eidos) and the only recent saving grace was FM 2015 but other than, everything has been rubbish, it's boring repetitiveness interactions buggy gameplay, such a shame as I couldn't get off my PC from Cm99/00 Cm00/01 and CM 01/02, I think I launched myself into a massive tirade trying to beat Barcelona in a Champions League final in cm 00/01, would never leave the house during summer off school, would never dream of playing that long on FM 24, it's just meh.
The only issue there is how much of a ballache it is to do a start date that isn't the beginning of the 2024/25 season.
This is obviously all guesswork, but I'm assuming they've already got the database made, as they'd have needed it for FM25. Is it really going to be that much work to port that over to FM24 and have someone fiddle about with the leagues to create a start date of summer 2024?
massive cockup
Fair point, although they likely already have the database from FM25's intended November release. It shouldn't take much to port over. But I still think they should have done something. Anything. FM25 is a lost cause, so might as well find some ways to reinstill faith into your player base. Especially since they tried to bury their heads in the sand for as long as humanly possible. On top of that, allowing pre-orders to take place for a game they likely knew was never going to release on time with no content was a scummy move.
Doing nothing at all when you've strung your player base along for a ride is in poor taste.
The database is probably iterative so I'm not convinced it would take a great deal of resources to put out an update.
Could be wrong though.
Released the statement at 2:34am 
They’ll just rebadge it FM26 with an October release date, they were never going to release 2 games this year regardless.
I’ll will say this as a FM player since 1999 with thousands upon thousands of hours into the game that SI are easily one of the laziest, least talented studios in gaming. They’re incredibly lucky to be in a market with zero competition that’s allowed them to release the same shit year after year with little to no innovation
I mean look at the 3D renderings and I’m not just talking about the match engine, the re-gens faces look like something from the PS2 it’s a joke I’ve never left the 2D engine because anything in 3D just breaks the immersion
Useless cnuts
I’ll will say this as a FM player since 1999 with thousands upon thousands of hours into the game that SI are easily one of the laziest, least talented studios in gaming. They’re incredibly lucky to be in a market with zero competition that’s allowed them to release the same shit year after year with little to no innovation
I mean look at the 3D renderings and I’m not just talking about the match engine, the re-gens faces look like something from the PS2 it’s a joke I’ve never left the 2D engine because anything in 3D just breaks the immersion
Useless cnuts
I saw an image the other day that showed the regen face progression and it's astonishing how they manage to make them so much worse every year.
EDIT: Here it is
Released the statement at 2:34am
Tbf Sega had to announce it first and they’re like 9 hours ahead.
Just five FM24 away at a ridiculous low price and release a database update patch
Tldr this sucks but I’m a sucker and will still keep buying the game even if it’s trash.
The delay/cancellation is disappointing though I’d say the way they’ve handled it from the beginning has worsened it far more. They should’ve just set far lower expectations (both on features and on timelines) when they initially announced the changes that were coming to FM25. It also doesn’t help them announcing constant bad news at the last second when everyone knows it’s coming.
The delay/cancellation is disappointing though I’d say the way they’ve handled it from the beginning has worsened it far more. They should’ve just set far lower expectations (both on features and on timelines) when they initially announced the changes that were coming to FM25. It also doesn’t help them announcing constant bad news at the last second when everyone knows it’s coming.
Has anyone used or tried any of the Match Engine mods for '24?
Might give it a whirl if I have time.
Might give it a whirl if I have time.
The database has definitely been iterative up to this point. You can tell by looking at the unique IDs assigned to clubs, players, etc. That's the reason logo and face packs work no matter which version you use.
I think a gesture of goodwill would go a long way, and I can't see why it'd be that difficult for them to quickly add the league/cup winners for last season, and add the option to start at the beginning of this eason.
I don't really care much about graphics in a game like this but I do agree with how poor the regen faces have become. The issue over a decade ago was they'd randomly go bald but now everyone turns up with a monobrow and looks like they've just ventured out from Shrek's swamp.
Anyway, as others have said, SI are a lazy bunch. When they announced the J league but then went back on their word was typical of them. People still defend their bullshit though as if all these problems weren't years in the making
Anyway, as others have said, SI are a lazy bunch. When they announced the J league but then went back on their word was typical of them. People still defend their bullshit though as if all these problems weren't years in the making
Surely it wouldn't be hard for them to integrate AI into the regen stuff like I was doing in the experiment.
As usual the fans have made shit way better than the devs ever could, but obviously they have to deal with licensing and probably need something AI driven signed off on because of ethical reasons.
If they made their own model, in theory you could have hyper realistic faces that also change and age with time. Would be very immersive.