Football Manager 2024 has been an overwhelming success since its full release in November; breaking record after record for Sports Interactive. In February, it was announced via the Sports Interactive website that the game had broken the 7 million mark for players, just three months after its release. That was more than the entire player count for Football Manager 2023.
Dubbed a love letter to football by Miles Jacobson, the Studio Director at Sports Interactive, the game hascertainly lived up to its description. Fans simply can’t get enough of the game’s 20th iteration.
So, what lies ahead for the Football Manager series? Although Football Manager 2025 is still about half a year from release, the hype around the next game is already building. Sports Interactive themselves even took the rare step to speak about the game a full two years in advance. According to Sports Interactive, FM24 marked the end of an era, with FM25 set to represent a complete overhaul of the game we know and love.
A New Game Engine
The biggest news to come out about FM25 is undoubtedly the use of a new game engine. Since about 2017, the game has been running on the same match engine with only minor tweaks made along the way and significant changes to the game’s UI haven’t been made for even longer.
In January 2020, a small group started work on Project Dragonfly with the intention of completely overhauling the game and its engine and although the pandemic delayed the process, FM25 is set to be the year this vision is finally realised.
The new game will be running via the Unity engine which will elevate the game’s graphic performance to new levels. Although this will likely require an increase in the specifications needed to run the game, it should lead to the sleekest and most realistic Football Manager game we have ever seen.
Unity Engine 🤝 Football Manager series
Can we hope for this kind of stadium variety one day? (Screenshots from Cities: Skylines) 🤞🏻 #FM25 pic.twitter.com/2wxZnqp11U
— Tony | FM Grasshopper 🦗 (@FM_Grasshopper) June 28, 2023
This isn’t just simply for the matchday experience but also for accessing all areas of the game thanks to Unity’s Universal Render Pipeline. This also includes upgrades to the game’s Newgens, the UI and how you go about creating your manager avatar.
Unfortunately, if you play on the mobile version of the game, this particular overhaul will not reach you for at least a couple of years yet.
New Animation Technology
Although FM24 already represented the first step in improvements to player animations, FM25 will be the completion of that process with new animations provided through the study of professional football and a new partnership with a company within the industry.
Much of this focus revolves around player movement and ball physics, all of which are designed to heighten the level of realism in the game.
Women’s Football
With increased media coverage and fan recognition, the world of women’s football has reached new levels in the last few years and shows no signs of slowing down. Just this season alone, the record attendance for the Women’s Super League has been broken multiple times both for one-off games and as a whole.
In February, Arsenal’s Emirates stadium was completely sold out for the club’s game against Manchester United and in March, the league surpassed its previous record for total attendance with still two months of the season remaining.
Ahead of the release of FC24, the addition of women’s football to Ultimate Team was announced and most fans have loved the addition to the game with it giving players even more options when building their squads.
In FM25, Sports Interactive are set to follow suit after four years of working towards that goal. So far, it is unclear which leagues will be included but it can probably be assumed that Europe’s top leagues will all be playable.
For now, that’s all we know about FM25 but even this limited information has left fans full of optimism for the future of the franchise. In their initial release discussing FM25, Sports Interactive said we would receive further information about the upcoming game in Q2 of 2024 so we should be hearing more details very soon.
I for one, as a player who only recently found my way back to the PC edition of FM after a few years on the mobile version, can’t wait to hear more. A new engine has been the obvious next step for several years and if the company can add even more realism to one of the most detailed games imaginable then I’m all for it.
The addition of women’s football is also fantastic news and will only help to bolster the sport’s reputation whilst also bringing even more new players to Sports Interactive’s franchise.
Even at this early stage, FM25 sounds like the real deal but for now, we can only await further updates with growing anticipation.
