Football Manager 24 (FM24) will be the twentieth game in the history of the series from Sports Interactive, the developer of the game. Miles Jacobson, studio director at Sports Interactive, revealed through a blog post that Football Manager 24 will feature big and small improvements, both new and revamps to the existing game.
“As a sneak preview, I can share the progress that’s been made towards one of the most requested features from our forums over the last 20 years—and that’s the ability to transfer saved games from one version of Football Manager to the next,” wrote Jacobson.
The announcement means that players of the Football Manager 23 career will be able to transfer their progress to Football Manager 24 “across all platforms”. As a Football Manager player, this was a sight for sore eyes.
I have often had to delay the purchase of new installments in the franchise because of the very thought that I will have to start all over to build my career. It often means abandoning over 50 hours of work. With this feature, I am sure that more players will be more at ease to purchase newer installments.
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According to Jacobson, when players first launch Football Manager 24, they will be given the option to continue their Football Manager 23 story. Interestingly, Sports Interactive is also working to make this feature a continuum. That is, Football Manager 24 saves can be rolled over to Football Manager 25, and so on.
Jacobson also mentioned that Sports Interactive is working to bring other requested features to life. It is good to see that the studio is listening. I bet this would spur more players to engage with the studio through their forum.
Football Manager 24 will be a tribute to old engines and technology
The last time that Sports Interactive made a huge revamp to the Football Manager’s graphics engine was in 2017—the UI engine update was way earlier. In January 2020, the studio launched Project Dragonfly which assigned a small group in the studio the task of finding ways to push the game’s technology forward.
Initially, the plan of Sports Interactive was to roll the lessons from Project Dragonfly into Football Manager 22. However, due to the impact of the pandemic, that was no longer possible. Consequently, they pushed the planned changes to FM24.
Jacobson announced the biggest leap that the series will have: “Football Manager 2025, FM25 Console, and FM25 Touch will be our first Football Manager releases to use a new engine—Unity”.
Unity, favored by Project Dragonfly, is a popular platform among game developers and has been used for popular games like Genshin Impact. The switch to Unity will give Sports Interactive more graphical power across all formats as well as powerful user interface tools.
In simple terms, the way players interact with the game is about to take a huge leap. Players should expect better graphics going forward, but the minimum spec requirements will likely shoot up too—except on Mobile.
Football Manager 25 will feature women’s teams
Since the first Football Manager was released in 2004, only men’s teams have featured in the game. Now, Sports Interactive wants to introduce women’s football teams to Football Manager 24. Studio Interactive first made the decision to add women’s football teams to the series in 2021.
“The FM25 cycle will see the long-awaited introduction of women’s football,” said Jacobson. “The women’s game deserves to be the best it possibly can be when it is released.”
The women’s team was added to the FIFA video game in 2015. In July 2022, Sam Kerr became the first female soccer player to feature on the global FIFA game cover and posed beside Kylian Mbappe for the FIFA 23 edition.
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“The facts are that we’ve made really good progress in many areas, including research, the match engine, and translations,” said Jacobson. “But there are other areas that haven’t made enough advancements, a lot of which are legal issues.”
Football Manager 24 is expected to hit the shelves around late October while Football Manager 25—which will have women’s football teams will likely be released in autumn of 2024.
It is really the end of an era
From Football Manager 24, players will also start to experience “a big jump with animations,” which Sports Interactive said was to make the game more life-like. There will be “graphical upgrades in models, stadiums, and the surrounding scenes that will be introduced in FM25,” said Jacobson.
Sincerely, this feels long overdue. Although Football Manager has grown through different generations of gaming consoles, players on the next-gen consoles are yet to see a big leap in graphics and user experience.
Therefore, the announcements by Jacobson, although exciting, oddly feel like scratching the surface of what Football Manager can be on the next-gen console if they decide to maximize the console’s power and possibilities. The first major FM25 reveal is expected in Q2 of 2024.
Which feature did you find most exciting in the announcement by Jacobson? Share your thoughts with us in the comment box below.
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