Football Manager 25 has been hit with yet another delay – a far bigger one this time – as development has proven harder than anticipated for Sports Interactive.
Football Manager, or simply FM, comes out in November of each year a couple of months after the start of the biggest leagues. It gives aspiring managers the opportunity to guide their favorite teams to global glory.
In September 2024, developers Sports Interactive announced that the game would be delayed by a couple of weeks, moving into mid-November. Now, however, it’s got far worse for players who were looking forward to getting their hands on the title.
In a statement on October 10, SI revealed that Football Manager 25 is going to be delayed until March 2025.
We have made the tough decision to delay the release of Football Manager 25 until March 2025.Statement: https://t.co/zW7dRd1Lkp pic.twitter.com/UKPnz4l0Gb
— Football Manager (@FootballManager) October 10, 2024
They said: “After careful consideration, Sports Interactive have made the tough decision to further delay the release of Football Manager 25.
“Following discussions with SEGA, our licensors and partners, we have agreed the best course of action is to delay the launch until March 2025. Specific platform release dates will follow once confirmed.
“In our last Development Update in September, we explained that we needed to push FM25’s original release back to give ourselves more time to deliver the best possible experience for this first installment in a new era of Football Manager.
“This additional time has not been sufficient to ensure the game quality and experience meets your expectations and our very high standards.
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“In the previous blog, we explained that it has been a difficult development cycle for the studio. Many things have been moving slower than we had predicted – despite everyone in the team working at an incredible pace to try and get everything done.
“Timelines were already tight and, as rightly pointed out by many of your recent comments, we were simply rushing too much and in danger of compromising our usual standards. This has put an enormous amount of pressure on everyone working across the studio, who are all passionately committed to delivering the best game possible.
“FM25 is the biggest technical and visual advancement in the series for a generation. We simply cannot compromise the delivery of this crucial juncture in Football Manager’s history by rushing to release it in November.”
With this delay, SI also confirmed that the gameplay reveal will be moved to January 2025. This is just a few weeks before release.
PC and Mac players will also be able to get Advance Access. However, again, those dates can not be confirmed at the time of writing.
Fans of the franchise were already concerned about the state of the game after preorders went live despite no features or reveals having taken place.