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Football Manager 2025 may not be for at least another year, but that hasn’t stopped the development team from hyping it up. In a recent blog post, Sports Interactive Studio Director Miles Jacobson has claimed that FM 25 “will be like nothing before.”
The Football Manager 2024 release date is likely to be in November 2023, and there will be a host of new features in that game too. However, FM 25 is set to receive a complete overhaul, starting from the very basics of the game.
When we saw that FM 24 would be “the last of its kind”, panic set in. As Jacobson puts it, “it’s a love letter to football and the FM series as we know it. It’s the closing of this chapter of our history.”
The fear that this will be the last Football Manager game was short-lived though, with Football Manager 2025 promising to be a revolution to the franchise, a true sequel to the game we have grown so accustomed to.
So what is Project Dragonfly? Since 2017, Football Manager has run the same graphics engine. Prior to that, the full game engine had not been updated for many years. This led to a small team being specifically tasked with improving the technology within the game, thus Project Dragonfly was born.
Originally, Project Dragonfly was to take its first flight back in Football Manager 2022. The global pandemic put an end to shoe plans, and the project slowed down. To ensure the full benefit and success of the project, the focus is now FM 25 and a Football Manager revolution.
A new engine, Unity, is coming to Football Manager 2025. FM 25 on PC, console, and FM Touch will all use Unity. For those who don’t know, Unity powers global games like Genshin Impact, Call of Duty Mobile, and Cities Skyline.
The engine switch is set to offer FM more graphic capability across all platforms, and more powerful user interface options. This means the game will feel drastically different both in and out of matchdays.
“FM 25 will have a significantly better looking matchday experience – both on the pitch and the supporting stadium environments, alongside a vastly improved user interface that will dramatically improve how you navigate through screens and access all the information available to you as manager,” explained Jacobson.
The new technology will also incorporate a change to Newgens and manager creation, although these features are in the early stages of their development. FM 25 Mobile is currently the only platform that will not benefit from the switch to Unity, but there are plans to adopt the technology in the future.
Coupled with the new graphic potential, the animations, ball physics, and player locomotion will all receive upgrades, with the help of a partner from the world of professional football. This will be a multi-year process so it won’t happen all at once, but Jacobson has acknowledged that FM 24 will still look better than FM 23.
Women’s football will also be integrated into Football Manager 2025. This will be the first foray into the women’s game for Football Manager, despite announcing their commitment to women’s football back in July, 2021.
This delay is in large part due to legal issues according to Jacobson. The aim is to give the best and most authentic experience possible. More announcements regarding the women’s game are expected to be made in future updates.
With all these changes coming to Football Manager, we can’t wait to see them in action. Sadly, we won’t be seeing any FM 25 related content until 2024 at the earliest! In the meantime, there will be more announcements regarding Football Manager 2024 very soon.
